Ethiopia: Forests for Biofuel – a Dubious Swap?

One wonders why, given their manifold munificence to us, we continue to consider forests as something easily dispensable and worthy only of our divided attention, merely worthy as photo op for dignitary’s spouses during publicized seedling plantings.

Let’s have a look at the largess which by no means is exhaustive, of course, and perhaps realize once again, what we are missing out on every time we cut forests. We can start with the seemingly mundane; charcoal and firewood that we harvest from forests and burn. Without felled trees, how would millions cook their meals?
From the mundane we go to the sublime. Forest environs are reputed to sooth your nerves and enhance your spirituality. A walk in the forest, some say, makes one admire nature and whoever was responsible for its being, if one have a religious bent. It makes one appreciate more one’s country too. That is, as opposed to a walk in a busy street, that reminds you of car manufacturers and rising prices.

In between the mundane and the sublime, you have so many things that trees are famous for. For starters, they give you your mahogany office furniture. They protect farmlands from being washed away. They make clean water possible. They increase evaporation. Increase evaporation, is that good? You bet. The more evaporation, the more likelihood for rain to occur and the whole system becomes wet as a result.

If you are, however, reluctant to buy the suggestion above, that forests are good rain makers, what you can’t possibly doubt is the fact they are the biggest hoarders of moisture underground once it has fallen as rain. In a way, they save the water in the soil for people to use it later in whatever form—- spring, river, and subterranean water.

Forests are the ideal haven for animals that find themselves fugitives from man. Forests comprise biodiversity and in a way shelter it. Clear forests and you invite assured extinction. Let’s not forget too that millions of aborigine people live entirely dependent on forests both within and on peripheries.

You may ask, what is new? Have we not been there and heard all that before? Well, you are right but what is new is this: Forests have been under attack for as long as history has been recorded. Now, a brand-new nemesis is on the offing. It comes in the form of what people call biofuel. It is the growing of huge mass of known staple crops and converting them to usable, mainstream energy, similar to fossil fuels. But how much and where to grow them is what makes it niggling.

With petroleum prices destined to go nowhere but up in absolute terms and cutthroat competition between countries to control oil at the sources, who would not do anything to see it replaced with some home grown form of energy?

No wonder then that biofuels have been highly hyped: Grow crops, which we do anyway, and produce fuel. It sounds so simple, does it not? But no, it is not as simple as it seems; when we take the environmental ramifications.

AllAfrica