The Great Game

I am most of the way though Jared Diamond's Collapse (Not as good as Guns, Germs, and Steel, but very much worth reading. Actually let me rephrase that, I strongly recommend it, and it should be required reading for any interested in the impact of the environment on human civillization.

Because I have been reading it I have been sensitized to deforestation.

Jax

Before the outbreak of war in 1979, Afghanistan was famous for its unspoiled woodlands filled with wildlife. An unbroken belt of natural pistachio forest stretched across the north, giant 300-year-old cedars filled the mountain valleys of the east, and even the arid hills of the south were well-timbered. Twenty-five years of war later, the extent of the country's environmental disaster is becoming frighteningly clear. In 1977 satellite imaging found 55 per cent of Badghis Province was covered with woodlands. Now almost nothing shows up. Desperate villagers stripped the mountainsides bare of trees to survive and, with no government authority to stop them, warlords found lumbering high-value trees such as walnut and cedar almost as profitable as the drugs trade. Forestry experts believe the country has suffered an environmental disaster that has hardly been noticed by the outside world but is grimly apparent to villagers who are increasingly seeing their livelihoods destroyed by desertification. The forests of the north - once famous throughout Asia for the pistachios they produced for export - have almost disappeared. Sayed Bahram Saeedi, director of forestry at the agricultural ministry, estimates that half of Afghanistan's forestlands have been destroyed during the last 25 years of war and drought. In the east the figure may be higher than 70 per cent. With government authority non-existent in many areas, the rape of the forests continues unchecked, and may even have been stepped up in the past three years as the end of fighting made it easier for timber mafias to operate. Along the Pakistan border, huge areas of forest have been levelled. High-quality wood is exported to Pakistan's carpenters, who turn it into furniture for export to the Gulf. The rest is sold as firewood in Afghanistan - the dusty road from the border town of Khost to Kabul is constantly choked with convoys of trucks filled with wood.

# posted by Jacob @ 4/08/2005 11:29:00 p.m.