Southeast Asia in 1997, Cities Choke and Forests Vanish
12/25/96
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Headline: Southeast Asia in 1997, Cities Choke and Forests Vanish
Source: Reuters
Date: 12/25/96
Byline: K.T. Arasu
Copyright 1996 by Reuters
JAKARTA, Dec 25 (Reuter) - Economic growth is surging in
Southeast Asia, but at a heavy price as cities choke on car
exhaust fumes and forests disappear under the saw.
But analysts see glimmers of light for the environment.
Bangkok's jam-packed streets are the most notorious. Each
day more than 760 new cars take to the road and Bangkok's 10
million people make an average of 18.87 million journeys.
The Thai capital is building a mass public tranport system but it is not
expected to be operational until 1999. Until then people will continue to
rely on cars, taxis, motorcycles and buses, whose belching exhausts poison
the air and make the city a public health nightmare.
The Thai authorities said new environmental regulations should start to
ease the problem next year, but effectiveness depends on enforcement,
which has been lax in the past.
"Lead should not pose any problem at all next year thanks to
a law requiring cars to use lead-free gasoline which has been in
place since early this year," said Supat Wangwongwatana, director of Air
Quality and Noise Management Division in Bangkok's Pollution Control
Department.
"The level of carbon monoxide and dust should also drop due to various
laws we currently use to curb them. But it all depends on law enforcement
and traffic conditions," he said.
In neighbouring Malaysia, the streets of the capital Kuala Lumpur are
rapidly approaching Bangkok levels of congestion, but earlier this month
the city opened a multibillion-dollar electric rail network aimed at
reducing the inflow of traffic.
There are seven million vehicles on the road in Malaysia -- an average of
one vehicle for every three people. Some 250 people died in road accidents
in November, officials said.
Opposition politicians say, however, that there is a major snag to the
Light Rail Transit (LRT) project -- price. At 75 Malaysian cents (US$0.30)
for a ride between two stations a mile (1.6 km) apart, the rail service
is exorbitantly-priced, opposition politicians say.
Officials responsible for the project said they were confident the public
would prefer the rail service, which runs above the city's traffic
carrying 16,000 passengers an hour, to buses and taxis which are much
slower and unreliable.
Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's government has also been promoting
liquefied natural gas (LNG) as fuel for cars, saying emissions are safer
than those from gasoline.
National car company Proton has spearheaded the campaign by
introducing more LNG-powered cars.
While Southeast Asia's cities have been gasping for air under a growing
cloud of exhaust fumes, there is carnage in the region's forests, although
here, too, there are signs things may be taking a turn for the better.
Jeffrey Sayer, director-general of the Bogor-based Centre for
International Forestry Research (CIFOR) in Indonesia, said
the issue was not halting deforestation but the amount of
forest, the type of forest left and where it is located.
"It is unrealistic to think there will not be a lot more forest cleared,
but it is important that you do safeguard a certain amount of forests for
environmental reasons and biodiversity," Sayer told Reuters.
"It is wrong to just portray the problem of forests as a problem with
logging of natural forests as it's a problem of competition for land use."
"It's a much bigger problem than good or bad logging. The
real long-term problems are outside the forestry sector."
Increasing population puts pressure on agricultural production which
increases the demand for land and leads to forest depletion. Relaxing
trade barriers also has an effect.
Areas opened up by commercial logging are often then exploited by shifting
agriculture leading to more devastation and mismanagement or over-
exploitation of resources.
One recent significant development is Indonesia's plan to cut down one
million hectares of forest in Kalimantan on Borneo island to convert the
land to rice production.
Much has been made of this plan as a way of making up for the shortfall in
rice production and achieving Indonesia's aim of rice self-sufficiency, a
keystone in the government's attempts to feed a population nearing 200
million.
"If they can have sustainable rice production on that land
it is not such a bad thing. The problem is whether it is all
suitable. What I suspect is that some of it is and some of it
isn't," Sayer said. He argues for a thorough study of the
project to determine which land is suitable and which is not.
"The yield for agricultural crops is not increasing fast
enough, so there has to be more land cultivated," he said.
But in some areas there are emerging positive trends. Forest depletion in
Malaysia, for example, is declining when those who had previously engaged
in shifting agriculture find alternative employment in plantations,
sawmills and factories.
It appears that the depletion of forests tends to go hand in hand with
certain early stages of development, Sawyer said. In Thailand, where jobs
are increasing, people are turning away from agriculture and moving to the
cities. Those left behind are increasingly cultivating alternative crops,
such as strawberries, under government sponsored programmes.
However, in Burma, the rush for quick profits is depleting forests that
had been carefully managed for more than 140 years.
But forested areas are increasing in places like Java and Southern China
through government policies that make it profitable to cultivate
plantations and make longer-term plans.
"The forest areas are expanding in Java and southern China
because it is worth your while to spend some time cultivating
forests. It is plantation and not natural forest, so it has no
value for biodiversity, but for general environmental reasons,
soil protection, water quality and greenhouse gases, the more
forests you have the better," Sayer said.
"But for biodiversity it is much more important to get forests that are in
the right places and as little modified from the natural state as
possible," he said.
Sayer said studies showed it was worth preserving 10 percent of all
forests for biodiversity reasons. These areas should be scattered around
and cover all different types of forest from many differnt areas. They
need not necessarily be in remote areas.