The Rainforests: Beyond Black and White
by Andreas Suchantke • Switzerland

The idea that the rainforest is of purely local significance is mistaken, particularly when one looks at the connections and interdependencies among the Earth’s living systems. Although the rainforest comprises only 3% of the Earth’s land surface, it accounts for almost one-third (29%) of terrestrial plant biomass. This represents a vast amount of fixed carbon which is now in the process of being "released" into the atmosphere.

Forests exert a large-scale influence upon climate. They store enormous quantities of water and release it in small doses into the environment through transpiration. In this way they prevent extremes of temperature and keep the air moist, just like a large body of water does. The Amazon catchment area contains 18% of all the freshwater that flows into the Earth’s oceans– almost one-fifth. It is not difficult to imagine what will happen once the forests have finally disappeared: floods and erosion will make vast regions uninhabitable, eventually turning them into desert.

Of course, such events might not have to wait so long. In the South American rainforest, the indigenous peoples are facing extinction at the hand of outside pressures, and the people settling in their place are Neo-Europeans who bring with them exploitative forms of agriculture (plantations) which are totally foreign to the natural landscape. These newcomers have so far failed to establish any true connection to nature in their new homeland; its ecology remains a closed book to them.

Is the rainforest inevitably doomed? No, there is hope for it yet. The conventional attitude sees conservation as the only alternative to destruction. What is required here is something more radical and far-reaching. Between the two extremes of wanton destruction and absolute protection there is another possibility: Restoration. This would involve intervening in the ancient stasis of the rainforest ecosystem in a way that would return it to a more "youthful" stage. This could mean introducing something new into the system or releasing the forest’s own powers of rejuvenation. Either way, it gives humans a creative role, which demands a great deal of effort and commitment.

If this sounds too optimistic or too much like wishful thinking, we should bear in mind that nature itself does not behave differently from this. Two opposing tendencies are constantly at work within it. One moves toward invariance, stability and balance, ensuring that organisms are perfectly adapted to their environment– in short, toward a steady state. The other moves toward drastic change, usually occurring in the form of external attacks– climatic changes, floods, continental drift, mountain formation, etc. These spell catastrophe for the steady state and lead to mass extinctions, but at the same time, the changes provoke new developments. New landscapes with new ecosystems emerge, new animal and plant species spread over the land. The cycles of life hold the key to fertility and they have been rigorously withdrawn from the earth in the rainforest. They must be anchored in it anew– must be reincarnated.

Utopian as this may sound, it is entirely practical. It is also extremely urgent. We are in a race against time with the ever-encroaching destruction that is proceeding by giant steps and will soon attain a momentum that will prove unstoppable.

The Kayapó Indians of the Amazonian rainforest offer one of the most impressive examples of restoration practices available to us. They pursue a highly developed form of forest cultivation which goes hand in hand with careful conservation. For instance, the Kayapó plant tree seedlings all year round. Another of their practices is the occa-sional felling of a single tree, which creates an enclosed sunlit clearing where hundreds of medicinal herbs are either planted or seed themselves. In addition, a luxuriant ground cover emerges which is absent elsewhere and attracts game. In these island-like clearings, the Kayapó manage, through highly refined composting techniques and the selective addition of certain plant ashes, to create fertile loam (soil)– an astonishing achievement considering that the untreated soil is as good as sterile. Crop plants are sown in mixed cultures made up of a large variety of selected species. The Kayapó call these ombiqua o-toro, which roughly means "friends in growth," an accurate description, for the plants grow better in these combinations than they would alone.

Organic agriculture is proving its worth to a more striking degree in the tropics than in temperate regions. With its ability to come to terms with the fragile ecosystems and worn-out soils found there, it may indeed be the only way of giving agriculture a viable future in the tropics. Nature stands to benefit from it. Through its rejection of monoculture and its creation of a diverse pattern of small cultivated plots of different kinds– fields, meadows, groves– it creates a rich mosaic of biotopes and habitats in which numerous wild plants and animals can find a home.

For the Western world, there are lessons to be learned here. We could begin, for instance, by correcting the false assumption that preservation and cultivation of the rainforest are totally incompatible. Unfortunately, the media continues to promote this assumption, along with many biologists who would prefer to exclude all humans (apart from a few highly qualified specialists) from the rainforest and turn it into a museum. This extreme, purist version of conservation holds no promise for the future– while it keeps out people’s destructive tendencies, so does it deny their creative potential.

The majority of the public reacts to the rainforest’s plight with a mixture of shock, nostalgia, and resignation: It is tacitly assumed that all attempts to save it are bound to come to nothing. Nevertheless, I have experienced time and again when speaking about the rainforest to students, that as soon as the subject of the Kayapó or new agroforestry methods are broached, there is a spontaneous surge of enthusiasm. Many of these young people express the wish to be there, doing their bit. If these things could become general knowledge, international pressure upon the countries concerned would no longer consist merely of measures to force them to halt the destruction, but could be increasingly aimed at encouraging existing and genuinely workable alternatives. And that would be developmental aid worthy of the name.

Swiss-born zoologist, botanist and Waldorf school educator Andreas Suchantke is the author of Eco-Geography: What We See When We Look At Landscapes, available from Lindisfarne Books, www.ecogeography.com