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Why American Businesses Should Care About African Deforestation

Why American Businesses Should Care About African Deforestation

First, globalization has linked international commodity markets much more intimately than they were in the past. Combined with a global depletion of tropical forests around the world – such as deforestation in the Amazon basin and Southeast Asia – Africa’s loss of forests will put something of a pinch on global wood-product prices as consumers in booming Asia and elsewhere look to other markets to fill their needs. North America, with its plentiful woodlands — also a region that’s recently bounced back from deforestation — could become such a source. While good for U.S. lumber companies, this shift by world consumers to wood products sourced from North America would nonetheless put upward pressure on prices paid here in the U.S. on everything from construction lumber to office paper.

Second, the felling of Africa’s forests and the harms that will follow from it will necessarily make countries like Malawi poorer, less stable places for investment, trade, and commerce. Such instability can promote conflict in the form of ethnic rebellions over access to diminishing resources, or provoke refugee flight as people leave their failing countries to seek out safety and opportunity abroad. This in turn could put pressure on surrounding countries, even prosperous and well-governed ones, and therefore increase the risk of engaging in business there.

As an example of what can happen when one country falls into the abyss, consider Central Africa, where a Hutu-led genocide against Tutsis in Rwanda killed hundreds of thousands of people in 1994. The ripple effect of that event has cursed Central Africa to this day – setting off a string of wars and rebellions in the eastern portion of the vast Democratic Republic of the Congo estimated to have killed two million or more people.

Finally, forest loss in Africa combined with that elsewhere in the tropics will impact the global climate as the world’s tropical forests or “lungs,” soak up large amounts of the carbon released into the air by human economic activity. Their loss will mean the disappearance of a large carbon sink that would otherwise sequester carbon into growing trees and tropical soils – making climate change worse.

If it’s true that global climate change is already happening at a pace faster than that recorded in the past 65 million years, the accumulated impact of forest loss could be profound as the century progresses. One implication, scientists say, is that ideal growing conditions for many plants will shift northward – potentially hurting agricultural output as nutrient-rich cropland in the Southern U.S. is abandoned for less naturally fertile soil further north. Even if output is not significantly impacted in the aggregate, shifting production further north could devastate southern farmers. They, unlike plants, are tied to their particular patch of soil.

It is also growing apparent that climate change could be particularly bad in the America West, where drought conditions are predicted to worsen. Already, reservoirs fed by the heavily dammed Colorado River are at their lowest point in decades, and in New Mexico persistent drought has forced farmers to drain aquifers and sell off their water rights to oil and gas companies. Combined with impacts on America’s coasts due to climate-change-induced sea level rise, the loss of Africa’s great forests could meaningfully impact how climate change plays out over the long run in the U.S., and that’s of interest to everyone.