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Re: re: Endangered Tropical Woods



One problem with "sustainable" plantations of wood species, as well
>as of coffee, bananas, and any other tropical plant item we use, is
>that a diverse tropical forest may very well be destroyed in order
>to create the "sustainable" (or "organic" in the case of food
>items) plantation.  I feel that we should not be using any
>tropical species (including the omnipresent banana!) unless they
>are certified and that the certification includes certifying that
>significant tropical forest wasn't destroyed (recently) to
>create the plantation.  


Not only a diverse tropical ecosystem, but often a diverse human economy. 
I work in a research library with one of the worlds largest collections 
of literature from Asia and south america. The picture of third world 
agriculture as unsustainable slash-and-burn is frequently innaccurate. I 
have been too lazy to keep track of all the literature I handle printed 
by NGO's or other local groups, but there is a human story of cultural 
and economic disruption, usually violent and always coercive, which is 
happening right now. I stopped eating non-organic bananas a few years 
back when I read an open letter which was published in Akwe:kon journal. 
It was by the cacique of a village that grew bananas, asking north 
americans to stop buying bananas because growing them was economically, 
physically and socially destroying his village. We assume that Coca cola 
is taking over the world because of some Darwinian superiority, and fail 
to realize that there are people who are having the western lifestyle 
forced down their throats with the barrel of a gun.

Karen 




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