Biodiversity Hotspots - Home. Page Content Life on Earth faces a crisis of historical and planetary proportions.
Unsustainable consumption in many northern countries and crushing poverty in the tropics are destroying wild nature. Biodiversity is besieged. Extinction is the gravest aspect of the biodiversity crisis: it is irreversible. No Birds Sing in Monoculture "Forests" MONTEVIDEO, Sep 24, 2011 (IPS) - Artificial single-species forests are expanding fast in countries of the developing South, fuelled by low production costs and incentives from governments, and causing severe social and environmental impacts, warned experts from around the world who met this week in the Uruguayan capital. The so-called "green deserts" are encroaching on the fertile soil of South America and other regions, with the proliferation of plantations of fast-growing and high water-demanding trees to be used to produce pulp and paper, and for other industrial uses, displacing local communities and threatening native ecosystems.
Many governments in the global South support this model of investment, production and consumption, which is replicated from the North, said the participants in the International Symposium on Forestation , held Wednesday Sep. 21, the International Day of Struggle against Tree Plantations. "A monoculture forest is almost like a stone quarry," she added. 'No substitute' for virgin forest.