At high tide, when the wind is strong, from my veranda in Bel Air Gardens I could swear the sea seems taller. I hope it is just my imagination, born of needless worry about global warming and its effects. But perhaps it is true, perhaps the sea is getting taller all around the world – warmer and taller and fiercer.
There seems to be a dispute among experts about how serious global warming and its effects really are. But just as I read one report which reassures me that the seriousness of the matter is exaggerated and that my family and I will not wake one morning soon to find the sea marching up the stairs, the very next day I read a report by marine biologists that hard and fast evidence of global warming is to be found in the awful fact that almost all of the Indian Ocean’s coral reefs have died in recent years. The beautifully coloured reefs have been turning into piles of grey rubble as the coral expels the minute organisms that live in the hard limestone core and cannot tolerate a rise in sea temperature of over 1-20 Centigrade, a norm which recently has been regularly exceeded. And, in any case, the current heat dome which has settled over Guyana tells me the inconvenient truth.
Just as worrying in the dismal, continuing saga of man’s sabotage of the world’s environment is the steady, seemingly unstoppable destruction of the earth’s forests. The progress of this scourge seems as inevitable as so many other man-made “globalization” phenomena. We can say that Guyana is an important exception to this disgraceful tendency.
The French poet and diplomat, St. John Perse, once pointed out that each published book consumed at least one noble forest tree and that hardly any book was worth the sacrifice of such beauty and such value, so that we should be careful about how much we write lest we cut all the forests down. In this modern world nobody has been paying much attention to him: we use more and more paper uselessly and destroy more and more trees unforgivably.
Since 60% of the earth’s jungle is concentrated in Latin America, particularly in Brazil and its surrounding area, we in this region have a special responsibility. Experts cannot agree how fast the forests are disappearing but they all agree that they are disappearing fast. One estimate is that as much as 10 million hectares are lost each year – that is 50 acres a minute: the forests are going down at the rate of 50 acres a minute. According to another estimate, West Africa has already lost over 70% of its rain forest while southern Asia has lost over 60%. In not many years half the Amazonian forest, it is estimated, may be destroyed.
It is a tragedy of enormous proportions. Forest occupies only 6% of the world’s land area but is the home of nearly half the world’s animal and plant species. Deforestation leads to the extinction of countless of these species. Thousands of rain-forest species are extinguished every year. Let your imagination dwell on that for a moment. This wanton destruction of basic life-forms is unbelievable. In terms of the animal and plant kingdoms it is the worst of genocides. Every species is valuable in its own right as a unique gift of the Creation. But in addition many of these species have economic potential as sources of food, beverages, gums, medicines, scents, pigments and insecticides. Even more serious in the long run, this genocide of species means a steady depletion of the global “Gene Pool”, the world’s reservoir of natural species, from which new generic strains of plants for agriculture are derived. Once part of this gene pool is lost it is irreplaceable. It is like losing a priceless jewel every day of your life, except that it is worse since a jewel has no life.
When forests are cleared several nasty things also happen to the soil. Nutrients are lost from the soil since in many forests these are stored in the layers of vegetation and not in the soil itself. This happens to be particularly true of Amazonia. Another big risk is simple soil erosion. The canopy of the forest shuts out sunlight and interrupts and softens torrential rainfall. The forest roots serve to bind together and protect the soil. Remove all this and the earth is defenceless and soon blows and washes away. It is to our great credit that Guyana has looked after its forest better than any other country in the world.
Peter Minshall, the creative genius behind so much that was and remains original and extraordinary in Trinidad’s Carnival, once wrote the following:
“Yes, Callaloo say, man have sense. But man don use the sense. Man make as master of de Eart. But man does play master as how dictator does play wid gun. Man power corruptin man. Man ravaging de lan wid greed. Man killin de Eart wid lack of care. Man spreadin pollution carelessly. Man spreadin concrete everywhere. Man go spread concrete over man self.
Is so? Callaloo ask. Is so man go do fo man own self? Is so man go put poison in de cup dat man self does drink from?
It only have one cup, Callaloo say. All tings on dis Eart, all pour from one cup. From dat one cup all does drink.
Dis little piece of Eart is de cup dat man does drink from. Is wid care man have to hold dat cup. Is wid life an love he have to fill it. Is circle dat man have to put roun man head. Is love man have to love man an is love man have to love dis little piece of Eart.”
