how do cattle dung and firewood become responsible for deforestation?
Answers
Answer:
There is a 'natural' and universal hierarchy in the use of domestic fuel. As income increases, wood and charcoal are replaced by kerosene and butane gas or LPG (in bottles), which are in turn replaced by piped gas or electricity. Pricing policies may accelerate this process or slow it down. Appropriate pricing and policies favoring the distribution of kerosene or butane may be the most important measures to take in meeting the needs of the poor and the environment. While the World Bank is against subsidizing kerosene or butane for cooking, and in favor of social reforestation programs, here we shall discuss the social and environmental consequences of this policy. For example. it would be scandalous if a deforestation crisis were to occur in a dry region of a country that exports oil if this were partly because rural families were too poor to buy kerosene or butane.
Demand for fuel destroys forests near villages and towns in many countries. The loss of trees leads to increasing erosion. Where dried dung is used instead of firewood, soil fertility is lost and harvests are reduced. This is less common in Latin America than in Asia or Africa, partly because the contribution of dung and fire-wood to total energy consumption is lower, and partly because the depletion of forest resources that would leave the population without firewood is not a problem in the humid tropical regions of Latin America. In Latin America the main threat to the forests is 'colonization': the forests are being Cut down faster than they can regenerate, and the valuable wood is burnt on the spot or left to rot. Other enemies of the forests are cattle ranching and logging (only species such as mahogany are extracted, but at the cost of widespread devastation), prime examples of export pressure on resources.
Lack of firewood is a problem in only a few regions of Latin America, basically in arid or semi-arid regions like the Andes, the coastal regions of Peru and Chili, the sertôes in Brazil, and parts of Central America and the Antilles. The Peruvian and Bolivian mountains suffer a high risk of becoming deserts with an acute short-age of firewood (Harrison, FAQ, 1984, 30). In the Andes, after trees like the Popylepis and Buddleia were wiped out, shrubs like Lepidophyllum were cut, and later even Distichia muscoide. The last resort was the collection of dung for fuel. It is estimated the in Asia, the Middle East and Africa about 400 million tons of dung are burnt per year (each ton implies the loss of 50 kg of cereal yield), but there are no comparable figures for the loss in Latin America (Dourojeanni, 1982, 340). Poverty fosters the destruction of tree cover, in turn affecting the water cycle and leading to soil erosion, while the use of dung as an alternative fuel for cooking or heating promotes the loss of soil fertility. Herdsman and peasants living in the mountains of Peru and Bolivia cannot afford kerosene or butane and must use dung for fuel (Godoy, 1984; Winterhalder et al. 1974). In this case, the economy is closed to external energy flow due to the lack of hard cash to pay for it.
Estimated consumption of firewood is between 750 and 900 kg per person per year (Foley, 1985. 256). Satisfying this need creates great tensions within the relatively dry and densely populated highland ecosystem. A reason-able estimate of firewood use in Guatemala is about one ton per person per year. part of which comes from pruning we shade trees in the coffee plantations, while the rest comes from forestry production or deforestation (Univ. Rafael Landivar-USAID, 1984, II, 99, 171 f.). There are also problems with deforestation in the highland and tropical ecosystems of Mexico. Trees do not always compete with agriculture. However, since .thc energy value of fire wood consumed per person is three times greater than the energy con-sumed as food, this may lead to great pressures on re-sources in densely populated areas. Like most medium-income regions. there was a tendency in Central America towards the replacement of firewood by kerosene or bottled gas. This was temporarily halted by the rise in oil prices after 1973 and 1979 (Leonard, 1987, 62). In Costa Rica, a rainy and mountainous country, cooking with hydro electricity is common and there is no deforestation problem caused by the collection of firewood for cooking. The causes of deforestation in Costa Rica have been quite different.
In some countries or regions, domestic demand for firewood or dung cannot be satisfied without reducing food of forage production. A higher price for firewood may increase the territory used to grow trees, almost in the same way that a higher price for oil may stimulate exploration for new reserves.