Uncle Ho’s Forests

Heidi Douglas

For a country with more motorbikes than people the carbon reduction Vietnam’s forests make to air quality could be key to the health of the nation. But immediate poverty outweighs the need for long term planning about climate change…

…This coming week in Poland the United Nations is holding another Climate Change Conference to further discuss the role of forests and deforestation in controlling carbon emissions. Under discussion will be mechanisms for reducing gross emissions from deforestation and forest degradation of all native forests in all countries. Perhaps initiatives like entrepreneur Dorjee Sun’s “using carbon markets to finance conservation” will find their feet. Dorjee’s vision is to enable third world countries to trade their native forest generated carbon credits with first world nations (www.carbonpool.com).
Uncle Ho’s Forests

STRETCHING down the spine of mountains that run the length of Vietnam, the Ho Chi Minh Trail was the secret lifeline that enabled the Vietnamese people to sneak weapons and reinforcements past American Army air raids during the Vietnamese-American War (1969 –72). The trail’s hot, wet, noisy jungles have become part of the fable of the scared American soldier who endured a waking nightmare engaged in guerrilla warfare against an evasive but determined North Vietnamese army. Large parts of these forests were bombed by the Americans with the deadly poison Agent Orange, killing plant life and the cover it provided the enemy. Vast hillsides remain bare and lifeless almost forty years later. The scarred earth is saturated with deadly dioxins that have also crept into the bloodstream of the locals causing three generations of birth defects.

In 1996 the Vietnamese government commemorated the importance of the Ho Chi Minh Trail by opening a new bitumen road that follows its contours. This new road opened up vast areas of land. Now the remaining forests that once helped disguise and save the Vietnamese people face a new threat. Poverty stricken northern Vietnamese, many of whom were starved, bombed and homeless after the Vietnamese war, have travelled down from the north in search of arable land. With more than 90 million people Vietnam’s population is booming and a rural life is more affordable to most than trying to compete in an urban environment. The forests of Ho Chi Minh’s army are now falling to the hands of the farmer and his family.

These forests are not only historically and culturally important but represent an untapped resource for Vietnam’s booming tourist economy. French middle-age tours and backpackers split the seams of the well-worn tourist trail up the A1 highway. Travellers in search of a quieter, rural experience can explore the hinterland around the Ho Chi Minh Road. Currently limited public transport and scarcely available multi-day car or motorbike hire means the only way to explore these mountains is on guided motorbike tour.

Titi, our guide, had been taking Easy Rider tours in the area for five years and has been watching the forests vanish. Illegal logging continues deep in the forest at night and during the day farmers slash and burn the land closest to the road. For a country with more motorbikes than people the carbon reduction these forests make to air quality could be key to the health of the nation. But immediate poverty outweighs these people’s needs for long term planning about climate change.

Environmentalists have labelled the last United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC) in Bali as the “Green Kyoto” because many delegates finally sat up and took notice of the importance of forest protection in the battle against climate change. Scientists have shown that if land clearing including forest logging was eliminated we could save 20 percent of carbon emissions. Land clearing releases carbon into the atmosphere and less forests means less transfer of carbon to oxygen by vegetation. New forests are not as efficient at carbon transfer as old forests.

But if first world nations like Australia are still struggling with ending large scale native forest logging and land clearing in ancient forests like Tasmania then how does a third world nation like Vietnam deal with deforestation? On a faded sign we passed on the Ho Chi Minh Road we could just make World Wildlife Fund’s Panda logo. And certainly there is some interesting information on their website. But whatever work is being done to protect these forests faces an uphill battle and is obviously not winning.

This coming week in Poland the United Nations is holding another Climate Change Conference to further discuss the role of forests and deforestation in controlling carbon emissions. Under discussion will be mechanisms for reducing gross emissions from deforestation and forest degradation of all native forests in all countries. Perhaps initiatives like entrepreneur Dorjee Sun’s “using carbon markets to finance conservation” will find their feet. Dorjee’s vision is to enable third world countries to trade their native forest generated carbon credits with first world nations (www.carbonpool.com).

Importantly also up for discussion this week at the UNFCCC in Poland is whether to include plantations within the definition of forests, or instead define forests as “ a terrestrial ecosystem generated and maintained through natural ecological processes”. If plantations are included under the definition of forests then Uncle Ho’s forests could fall to the same fate as Tasmania’s, where monoculture plantations have replaced many ancient old growth forests.

The global community may decide to protect Uncle Ho’s tropical forests to secure their role in carbon reduction. But corruption, illegal logging and poverty may still prove to be their death knell.

Heidi Douglas