Rainforest: Dispatches from Earth's Most Vital Frontlines

Abstract

Rainforest promises a series of environmental news stories by a far-ranging journalist, but this book delivers much more because of Tony Juniper’s high credibility. He has professional experience in both international environmentalism and public service. The book is persuasive and timely. The author is credible because he travels worldwide; his methods include interviews and firsthand narratives about demonstrations and campaigns to impact corporate policies. He wants retail business leaders and government officials to become more sensitive to environmental impacts of their suppliers. To that end, he works with activists to collect evidence of deforestation, fragmentation, loss of wildlife habitat, and corruption of bureaucrats. Then, reports, widespread publicity, and documentary films follow. Three features of Rainforest are most interesting to general readers as well as scientists. First, Juniper describes the dynamics of the rainforest and climate change. Second, he presents short summaries of protests and international organizing, not grassroots organizing, but environmental partnerships with corporations and the Prince of Wales, now King Charles III. Third, Juniper’s continent-by-continent descriptions of the ecological, social, and economic problems created by deforestation have surprise value as well. The main section includes three detailed maps of rainforests of the past and present as well as photos of trees, fungi, and wildlife by Thomas Marant and the author. Other photos from news sources dramatically illustrate deforestation and indigenous people who are working on forest projects such as shade farming. The early chapters are the foundation for Juniper’s dispatches from the ‘‘frontlines’’ of the rainforest destruction. Part one begins in South America with a highly readable introduction to the factors that drive climate change. Juniper introduces the continuous rainwater recycling system that sustains life on Earth. The forest fog condensation and uplift of clouds in the western Amazon River area fall as rain. This basic life force comes from tree physiology, that is, transpiration, carbon dioxide, and oxygen. The first four chapters explain the little-known dynamic ecology of tropical rainforests and a short statement of specific forests with status as biodiversity hotspots. Juniper probes deeply into the history of the forest. After Europeans arrived in the Amazon, disease, slavery, and poverty caused the death of most of the indigenous people. He ties poverty and political corruption today to forest clearing worldwide; those replace harmonious life within the forest. When farm corporations change the complex forest ecology to fields of soybeans, grazing for cattle, and monocultures of palm oil, the loss is greatest to the local people as well as those affected by the climate change due to the deforestation. The author is not judgmental but straightforward about the forces that cause hunger, widespread poverty, and violations of preserve boundaries for farms and hunting. Part two of Rainforest swiftly spans four centuries with a comprehensive description of the rainforests on all continents from the Americas to India, Southeast Asia, Pacific islands, and Australia. Historical changes in the Americas include slavery, destruction of small farms in the shade of tall tropical trees, and disease. After timber harvesting and loss of soil moisture, corporations began large-scale farming of soybeans, beef cattle, palm oil, cacao (for chocolate), and coca (for cocaine). The relationship of clearcutting to global warming is now clear. After deforestation, the lack of rainfall impacted rivers that flow to hydroelectric power dams in Brazil. He cites Deborah Lawrence