Quantum Forest

<rant>

I love when organizations pretend to catch up with the outside world and try to sound all hip and convinced. Let’s all be sustainable and sustain this, sustain that. And they take puny steps and separate rubbish in three different bins and move the time cost of that separation to their most expensive employees. But they are on the high ground because, you know, they care about being sustainable. Except when they don’t.

They may have the chance to support an idea with the potential to change two industries that operate at the landscape level. But the idea is too simple, it does not sound revolutionary enough, it does not have the appropriate level of ‘hipness’. And they drop the ball, and we continue operating in the same way. But ’sustainability’ is a priority.

</rant>

Well, now I feel better.

Norman Borlaug–the ‘father of the Green Revolution’–just died^§. I raise my glass for a breeder who did make a difference.

Last week I was contacted by my friend Marcelo about increasing awareness of air pollution problems in Santiago, Chile. He was becoming involved in the problem from a technical point of view (GIS and urban forestry). One of the main problems was the lack of proper information for decision making, so we decided to quickly put together a prototype. Today the page on particulate material pollution went online.

The general process was relatively simple. CONAMA provides data on pollution in graphical form (see, for example, here). I had a quick look at the pages using Firebug, which showed that all the data used for the graphs was contained in one of the javascript files called by the page (variable.js). Then I could obtain up to date pollution data by reading that file, which seems to be updated hourly.

The other component was the location of the air quality stations together with the coordinates of the polygon that marks the city boundary. Marcelo provided me with a KML file containing all the coordinates.

The really fun part was to write a script using Python glueing all these components. The advantages of working with such a great high level language is the default library, which makes chores like reading a file located in another web site very simple, like:

import urllib
f = urllib.urlopen('http://www.conama.cl/rm/airviro/hoy/variable.js')
lines = f.readlines()

Probably the most challenging part has been to quickly learn the basics of KML (without having much free time to do so). The documentation for KML is OK, but the tutorial was not exactly what I was trying to do, so there was a fair amount of trial and error to get things working properly.

Overall, coming back to Python (which I started using in version 1.5) has been a lot of fun, particularly when one has a project of ’social value’.

I finished studying forestry in 1992; it reads like a life ago. I did study in Santiago, Chile and one of my first decisions was to leave the city. Actually I was thinking of leaving Santiago well before completing the degree.

When people ask me about going to Chile and their intention to visit Santiago my first thought is always ‘Why?’ Despite of tourist brochures, and the not always reliable ‘Lonely Planet’ guide, the city is a shit hole. A five million people city, spread ad infinitum, with the consequent crime, pollution and neurosis. However, a redeeming — for me — feature of that city is that some of my friends live there. One of my friends is trying to sort out pollution (or at least part of it) using trees.

I grew up having the Andes as a point of reference, and when one can see them, they are very impressive.

Photo by Felipe Trucco.

The problem is that a lot of the time — particularly in winter — the city looks like this.

Photo by .S.

Besides the visual difference, there is a lot of particulate materials that have very negative effects on health. Here is that trees come into place.

‘Traditional’ foresters tend to be suspicious about ‘Urban forestry’, but it is an approach that could benefit Santiago. Trees would contribute to reduce the amount of small particles suspended in the air, not the least by stabilizing land areas now simply covered by dirt. These areas become all muddy under rain and are transformed into dust sources when they dry up.

Have a look at Anisotrópico (Marcelo’s blog) for details. He also setup a handy KMZ file (16 KB) for checking the data of the EMC stations monitoring air quality in Santiago through Google Earth.

I am no greenie, but I dislike to see waste, particularly when it is easily avoidable. Thus, at home we avoid packaging, reuse a fair amount and recycle the rest. It is easy to believe that whatever has stuck a recyclable label should be in fact recyclable. However, here comes the distinction between theoretically recyclable and actually (economically) recyclable.

Christchurch’s city council publishes a list of what can be recycled. If one combines that list with the problems to recycle some types of glass (pointed out in Environment’s Canterbury newsletter (PDF doc, 4 MB), there are lots of items that are supposedly recyclable (according to their labels) but are not in practical terms.

This includes plastic containers with codes higher than 2, which include polyvinyl chloride (3 PVC), low density polyethylene (4 LDPE), polypropylene (5 PP), polystyrene (6 PS) and combined plastic products (7). Think of yogurt and detergent containers, bread bags and many detergent bottles. Think of many types of glass bottles. In addition, there is also no reasonable way to dispose of used batteries.

This means that one can not trust the label, but one has to check ‘the intersection of lists’ to know what is truly recyclable in this place.

I got you! This post is not about the end of forestry activity in Tasmania, but about the end of the Forestry in Tasmania web pages. After two years compiling materials and hand formatting HTML I have decided to stop updating the sub domain. The fact that I am leaving Tasmania at the end of the year—so I will not have time to keep up to date with what is going on—is just the straw that broke… you know.

I still need to decide what to do with the site; either I will leave it unchanged for posterity’s sake or pull the plug and delete the whole thing. Over these last two years I have received a fair amount of abuse and a few examples of praise for keeping the site and trying to present a ‘fair view’ of environmental discussion in Tasmania. However, whatever tries to pass as debate is so low quality that it is easy to get disheartened with what one reads in the media.

Will I start a ‘forestry in New Zealand’ page? I doubt it; my role will be completely different and forestry activity over there is much less contentious. I rather spend some time learning Maori—I am quite keen about this—and practicing the haka with Orlando.

The Tasmanian forest industry has lost contracts to supply 400,000 tonnes of woodchips to Japanese paper companies. This will certainly have an effect on industry and Forestry Tasmania already announced that it will be offering voluntary redundancies. They will most likely be targeted at non-essential jobs (trimming the fat of the organisation) so those positions will not be filled again. It would not make any sense otherwise.

While the forest industry was quick to blame Greens and other conservationists, they also have a good proportion of blame. It is true that conservationists have been tackling the customers of Japanese paper companies, in many cases with misleading information. This pushed companies like Nippon Paper to start public consultation on the issue. However, it is the Tasmanian industry’s fault to have mostly ignored this situation and clearly of being out of touch with their customers. This campaign did not happen overnight, but it has been going on for years.

There are also indications that the cost of woodchips from Tassie is becoming not very competitive. There may be some elements of hard negotiations too, with Japanese customers playing the environmental card mostly for obtaining lower prices.

Whatever the full reasons, it is clear that we have some very interesting times ahead.

A few months ago Senator Bob Brown was complaining that nothing would happen with the government’s electoral promise on forests. Last Friday—Friday 13^th, spooky—John Howard (Australia’s Prime Minister) and Paul Lennon (Tasmanian Premier) signed the ‘Supplementary Tasmanian Regional Forest Agreement’ in a visit to the Styx Valley.

The extension to the RFA includes much more than just extra reserved land:

• Extra 193,400 ha protected (148,400 ha of State Forests and 45,000 ha of voluntarily protected forests). This covers two of the most contentious areas: the Tarkine and the Styx Valley, plus a number of small areas. Out of the 148,400 ha there are 120,000 of old growth forests. The new areas are reserves and not national parks; thus, they are not available for forestry but the mining industry still can claim mining rights.
• Clearing and conversion of native forests (both old growth and regeneration forests) to other land uses (plantations, farming, etc) on public land phased out by 2010. Same situation in private land by 2015.
• Old-growth clearfelling will be reduced to 20 percent of total production (400 ha a year) by 2010, favouring partial harvesting methods. There will be no acceleration of harvest rate in old growth forest.
• There will be an expansion of hardwood plantations of 16,000 ha (most likely in converted land) to allow meeting a legal commitment of 300,000 m³/year of sawlogs and reducing reliance on old-growth forests.
• End of use of 1080 in States Forests (although this is not new) and incentives for private land owners to do the same.
• There would be an extra 213 jobs in forestry (155 direct and 53 indirect).
• There are other bits and pieces including ‘feel good’ programs of AUD 1 million for water quality assessments and AUD 2 millions for studying Tasmanian devils’s facial cancer. Not that they are not important, but they have not much to do with the rest of the RFA.

It is now clear that the delay of the announcement (from December to May) was due to intense negotiations to provide a much more comprehensive package. This extra coverage comes at a cost though; where the initial budget was AUD50 millions from the Federal Government, it increased to AUD250 millions (160 millions from the federal budget plus 90 millions from state government). There will be AUD 115 millions for intensive forest management and AUD 42 millions for the hardwood industry. This is still a small number compared to Labor’s promised AUD800 millions.

If the sign of a fair deal is that everybody is a little unhappy, we are in the presence of a good deal. The Greens and other conservationists can not stand it—the Greens call it forest torture—but nobody expected that they would like any solution to the problem, which is key to their political position in Australia. Farmers do not like the deal because it imposes restrictions on land clearing. Part of the forest industry does not like it because it reduces—and in some cases eliminate—access to to specific forest resources.

It is clear that with a reduced available forest area, there will be an intensification of silviculture of the remaining land, particularly in plantations.

Some sources:

• Full document and maps for the Supplementary Tasmanian Regional Forest Agreement 13 May 2005.
• Tasmania’s Premier press release.

Last week — 16^th of February to be exact — the Kyoto protocol entered into force. USA and Australia did not ratify the protocol — rightly in my opinion — making their governments highly unpopular with environmentalist groups.

Listening to Radio National while taking a shower there were reports of fundamental Christians flooding the White House switchboard with calls requesting the president to sign the Kyoto protocol. The news reminded me of the article What evangelical environmentalists do not know about economics.

Some people are surprised by a potential alliance between conservative Christians and atheist environmentalists, but they should not be. They are both expressions of fundamentalist beliefs, some considering a sacrosanct earth just by itself while others because it is God’s creation. I have to say that it was funny to hear a member of the Sierra Club, now full of biblical references, in an attempt to show how they share the same cause with conservative Christians.

The Lowy Institute for International Policy just released a document entitled Sensible Climate Policy (PDF, 686KB) by Warwick McKibbin. It makes an interesting reading and puts the problem in perspective.

The report states that we can be sure of two things: 1. emissions of greenhouse gases have increased and 2. an increase of greenhouse gases should increase temperature. Some big unanswered questions are: increase by how much, does the Kyoto target mean anything and how much will cost to implement Kyoto. McKibbin’s report points out some of the flaws of the protocol (including uncapped costs for unknown benefits and its rigid timetables approach) and proposes an alternative system: the McKibbin Wilcoxen Blueprint. The blueprint looks like a much more palatable option for countries, making its success much more likely than Kyoto’s protocol.

P.S. This is not an argument against climate change, but against the usefulness of the Kyoto protocol to tackle it.

Walking in Liverpool Street, Hobart, I was approached by a Wilderness Society (TWS) campaigner, who asked me if I wanted to help to keep Tasmania’s air and water clean and, ergo, protect the forests.

Of course I started questioning some of the information that she was giving me:
—‘But already forty percent of the forest is protected’, I said.
—‘No, only forty percent of the land it is’, she said.
—‘No, you are wrong in this’ and I started giving her some figures, but she kept repeating her mantra and that the Society has scientists that keep track of these figures.
—‘And what about poisoning with 1080 that causes cancer in people and the Tasmanian devils’, she insisted.
—‘May cause’, I corrected, ‘there is no proven link or any shred of evidence linking pesticides and Devil cancer’. Even further, ‘Forestry Tasmania will stop using 1080 (by law) in December this year’.
—‘We need to keep campaigning to put pressure on the government so forestry really stops using 1080…’

I kept asking questions and she kept pointing at a map in a plastic folder, saying that ‘we need to protect biodiversity, clean water, clean air and the future of our children’. Then I commented that a big chunk of what she was pointing at the map was already protected. And then she went on ‘we need to protect biodiversity, clean water, clean air and the future of our children’.

After struggling to show some knowledge of basic facts and statistics, she explained that she did not need to know the all the numbers and facts behind the problem. Her conviction of doing the right thing was enough, and other people from TWS could answer for her. That reminded me of religion lessons at school, when a priest told us what to reply in case we did not know what to say: ‘doctores tiene la iglesia que sabrán responderos mejor’. This can be loosely translated as ‘the church has doctors (sensu people that know the scriptures) that will be able to give you a better answer’. In summary: one does not need to think, but only to believe. A sad situation I would say.

She asked several times if I wanted to join with a contribution, and each time I said no. She then started saying that she could not continue talking with me, because she needed to convince other people to contribute (so I was a lost cause, I assume). She let me wondering, do campaigners work on commission?

By the way, I am not suggesting that the forest industry has a perfect record or anything similar. It is only that I find impossible to reason with people that regurgitate a mantra, without thinking or checking the most basic information freely available.

PS. 2004-02-08. Added the antepenultimate and last paragraphs. Incidentally, I do not know if this type of campaigners are volunteers or if they actually receive a payment. The comment about working on commission refers to her unwillingness to continue the discussion.