Still to be saved? Josef H. Reichholf on “Rainforests”. Review. – Culture

The tropical rainforests: You can hardly pronounce these words today without pain. For in the global catastrophe that capitalist humanity has instigated, its rapid annihilation seems to be the most fatal, the most irretrievable, the most senseless of all losses. And while one can hope and believe that the forest fires in California and Greece will, after some delay, grow again what was already growing there, it is to be feared that with every tree burned down in Amazonia, ancient treasures of life will be permanently gone.

Josef H. Reichholf, until his retirement, head of the vertebrate department of the Zoological State Collection in Munich and professor of ecology, has written a number of books in recent years, each of which is eye-opening. In a subject area in which there is a lot of highly committed confusion, he is characterized by calm competence, which does not misjudge the seriousness of the situation, but adjusts the structures and proportions of the facts. One could learn from Reichholf, for example, that highly efficient sewage treatment plants built with the best of intentions thin out the nutrients and leave behind pure, but dead bodies of water in which nothing lives anymore (i.e. the opposite of what one actually wanted); or how the disappearance of the butterflies could be at least partially reversed with relatively simple measures. He never called out in the monotonous voice of the penitential preacher: Repent! But always explained in a prudent way what exactly it was that had to be changed.

So now he has devoted an entire book to the rainforests, which he often visits and about which he has written before. It has three unequally large parts: a first, quite long, in which he shows what it actually is, a rainforest, and how its different types differ in South America, Africa and Southeast Asia; a second in which he analyzes the causes of their decline; and a third and rather short one, in which he makes suggestions for a rescue. Everyone is enlightening, the third one can be arguable.

It is difficult to give an outline of the informative wealth of the first part; one has to read it in its entirety. Reichholf speaks of the fact that rainforests were never paradise, as the worshipers of biodiversity proclaimed them to be for arithmetic reasons; they counted, but they didn’t look. The immense biodiversity, which is nowhere else in the world, does not mean an abundance of life, but on the contrary, a scarcity that could only be escaped through extreme specialization. Diversity and rarity are mutually dependent; and especially the most species-rich habitats appear empty to the curious tourist.

If you really want to see diversity, advises Reichholf, don’t go to the Amazon with its depleted soils, go to Costa Rica: There is not only the infrastructure of gentle tourism there, but the recent volcanism supplies the plants and ultimately also the plants Animals with enough minerals.

Incidentally, he also points out, it is by no means the case that tropical and subtropical forests can only survive as completely untouched by humans, and presents Kipling’s “Jungle Book” as proof: In the monsoonal forests of India there has been human interference for millennia, And yet, or perhaps because of it (because human use creates differentiated zones of transition), elephants, tigers and small wolf cubs would have stayed there, while the largest animal is the tapir under the closed deep green canopy of Amazonia.

Countries like Brazil suffer double the damage from the exploitation of their nature

The reasons why these last wilds on earth outside of the dry and cold deserts are at the collar today are not unknown; But they are unpopular even with the political representatives of nature conservation, especially with them, and are accordingly vaguely discussed. Reichholf names the mechanisms that are effective here with the most desirable conciseness: At the various climate protection conferences, the rich states of the West concealed the global networking of all trade and action by pretending that it was not their responsibility when, for example, Brazil clears huge areas to grow soy or the rainforests of Indonesia fall victim to palm oil plantations.

Countries like Indonesia and Brazil have instead received a special license for CO₂ emissions because they apparently wanted to give these post-colonial or otherwise disadvantaged societies a bonus. The population of these countries has absolutely nothing from cattle breeding, soy and palm oil cultivation on the newly cleared areas: These are operated by international corporations that export most of their products to the west and north.

In Germany, thanks to imported feed, it is possible to raise amounts of cattle that would never be able to be fed on the area available here. The excess meat produced in this way (and of course subsidized) is then thrown onto the world market, that is, sold to countries such as Brazil, where, since it is unrivaled cheap, it ruins local agriculture. These countries suffer double the damage: on the one hand, because their natural treasures, the forests, are being destroyed; and second, because sensible indigenous land use is being deprived of its foundation.

Reichholf and Brandstätter draw maps full of sadness

Reichholf is too polite a person to say explicitly that on this point the Greens in particular, who are committed to preserving “our” environment, have almost completely failed. They curse the Brazilian President Bolsonaro and thereby distract from the real context. Instead, they rely on “sustainable” palm oil as a fuel additive, knowing full well that it is more likely to win elections in this country than by clarifying where it comes from, especially since the green fronds of the palm plantations on Google Earth look so wonderfully natural from above.

Around 1950 Borneo, twice the size of Germany – as can be seen from Reichholf’s maps – was still almost completely forested; around 1980 still halfway; today almost only in the retreat area of ​​its mountains. They are maps full of sadness. They are supplemented by the travel reports of his illustrator and friend Johann Brandstätter, who visited the same area in Malaysia once decades ago and once now. You don’t even want to quote him, what he has to say is so devastating.

Reichholf truly thinks globally. But since he does, he sees no viable alternative to capitalism, whose global workings he recognizes. His recommendation is to buy as large areas of the threatened rainforest as possible and thus avoid destruction. He names Chinese projects as a model, albeit not as a model. China, especially in Africa, has acquired land on a large scale as agricultural production area. Couldn’t you just do it that way with the rainforest, under a different sign?

There is no shortage of voices warning of colonialist interference

It would be nice. On the one hand, the Chinese use, which always improves the infrastructure, is likely to be far more evident to the locals than the non-use in protected areas. Secondly, there are now significant local objections against “land grabbing” in China’s politics. And thirdly, what would be done if the impoverished population of the “failed states” penetrated the protected areas on a massive scale, as is already happening today in the African gorilla reserves? Do you then want to shoot the poachers in the act, as is already happening today (whereas in Central Europe they usually get away with fines)?

The exploitation of the south and its forests from the north is in full swing – but every attempt from here, that is, from the north, to prevent the south from its catastrophic self-mutilation, encounters almost insurmountable difficulties. Because only at the price of such self-mutilation can the South participate in business at all. Neither in the south nor in the north is there a shortage of partly good faith, partly hypocritical voices warning of colonialist interference; and so everything goes on as before.

To reproach Reichholf’s book for this would, however, mean accusing the wrong person. His analysis is accurate; his proposals have an unmistakable streak of desperation.