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HomeMy WebLinkAbout1991-10-08 - AGENDA REPORTS - TROPICAL TIMBER RESO 91 91 (2)AGENDA REPORT City Manager Item to be presented UNFINISHED BUSINfS5 DATE: October 8,.1991 SUBJECT: Tropical Timber Resolution Resolution Number: 91-91 DEPARTMENT: Community Development BACKGROUND At the May 28, 1991 meeting of the City Council, several questions were raised regarding the implementation of the proposed Resolution Number 91-91 restricting the City from purchasing items made from rainforest hardwoods. The following is a response' to those questions brought up by the Council. Attached are two articles giving additional background information on the problems associated with the cutting of the rainforests. 1) Are there any problems with plywood? Will this cause problems anywhere in staff having to avoid (this usage)? The Public Works Department has reviewed its usage- of lumber and has determined that its normal usage does not include lumber from the rainforests. Mahogany stocked by City suppliers comes from the Philippines rather than from tropical rainforests. In the normal operations of the Public Works Department, mahogany is not used. With regard to plywood, a large amount of the plywood that has been imported into the U.S. is mainly made up of Lauan, a Southeast Asian tropical timber. To avoid using any products that originate in the rainforests, staff can be directed to ask the origins of the products they plan to purchase, and not purchase. those products which have origins in the rainforest. Both imported and domestic plywoods- are available and comparable. 2) Are there other suppliers? There are many alternative wood sources to tropical hardwoods. Many comparable woods are grown in this country on ranches that grow trees specifically for the purpose of selling lumber. 3) Have we been using these anyway? The majority, of the wood products used by the City are not from tropical timber. According to the purchasing division; the City does not currently purchase anything which may contain tropical timbers. A large amount of the uses of such timber are for ornamental purposes, interior trim, cabinetry and inlay designs..The City does not maintain. this type of usage. Most of the furniture owned and purchased by -the City is made of wood laminate products. Adopted.. Item. _ Agenda Report, Resolution Number 91-91 Page 2 4) Is this just a gesture? The City does not have many uses for the timbers listed in the resolution. If City Hall was a historical building that. had decorative woodwork trim, chances are that the trim would be made up of rainforest hardwoods. If such woodwork was in need of repair, the City would have to decide what to make the repairs with. Since the City does not have this type of usage, and does -not currently purchase anything which may contain tropical timber, this is primarily a gesture. 5) Can the City purchase recycled woods? The author would leave this to the discretion of the Council. Purchase of an item from a secondary source is still purchase of a tropical timber, although no rainforest was cut down to support that second purchase of the same item. The resolution does contain a provision for exemption should the Council need to purchase such products. 6) Are any of these woods grown in a ranch situation? Will this effect unemployment in those areas? The rainforests are being cut down by multinational corporationswho are seeking new oil sources, and by cattle ranchers who need space to graze their herds in anticipation of selling this beef Once an area is cut, few saplings are replanted, leaving areas that resemble deserts. The land will only support cattle for a few years, and the ranchers then have to look for new land, cutting down another portion of the rainforest. Unemployment will not be affected in these areas, as indigenous people who depend on the rainforests to provide them with an income are not the people who are cutting the rainforests.. Brazil nuts, spices, house plants, avocados, vanilla, 25% of prescription pharmaceuticals and 70% of all anti-cancer drugs come from tropical rainforests. Indigenous people make their living by gathering these renewable items for sale. The cutting of the rainforests deprives many indigenous people from earning a living, as their main source of income is lost. RECOMMENDATIONS Adopt Resolution 91-91 and direct staff to enforce this resolution throughout the City's departments. Resolution 91-91 "Rainforests and Biodiversity" from Saving the Earth - A Citizen's Guide to Environmental Action, by Will Steger and -Jon Bowermaster. New York: Knopf, 1990. "Rainforests" from The Green Consumer, by John Elkington, Julia Hailes, and Joel Makower, New York, Penguin Press, 1990. RESOLUTION NO. 91-91 A RESOLUTION OF THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF SANTA CLARITA, CALIFORNIA, FOR THE ADOPTION OF A POLICY REGARDING PROTECTION.OF TROPICAL TIMBER WHEREAS, tropical rainforests are being destroyed at a rate of 50,000 acres per day and rainforests larger than the State of California are disappearing from the earth yearly; and WHEREAS, the use of. imported tropical timber by the United States represents a substantial loss of tropical rainforests, and scientific evidence has shown that the destruction of tropical rainforests is partially responsible for the Greenhouse Effect, as well as contributing to the death of indigenous rainforest peoples and the destruction of their culture; and WHEREAS; the tropical rainforests are home to half of the world's species, and the loss of these forests results in the extinction of tens of millions of species; and WHEREAS, it is in the interest of those who live,.work, and do business in the City that measures be -taken to reduce or stop the destruction of tropical rainforests worldwide; and WHEREAS,. a ban on the use of tropical timber by the City would reduce demand for tropical timber, thus lessening the need to cut more tropical rainforest; and WHEREAS, such a ban would not create shortages of building supplies, as alternative wood products are grown in a substantial fashion in temperate forests; and WHEREAS, the ban would stimulate business and provide jobs in the United States, as many alternatives to tropical hardwoods are grown domestically. NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED by the City Council.of the City of Santa Clarita, California, as follows: SECTION 1. The City Council hereby adopts the following policy: A. The City of Santa Clarita shall not purchase any item or product which has originated in part or whole from any tropical hardwood species listed in.this section, nor shall and City sponsored event utilize such products, nor shall City Public Works contractors utilize such products. B. Tropical hardwood species include, but are not limited to the following: Scientific Name Common Name Vouacapoua Americana Acapu Pericopsis Elata Afrormosia Shores. Almon Almon Peltogyne Spp. Amaranth Guibourtia Ehie Amazaque Aningeria Spp. Aningeria Dipterocarpus Grandiflorus Apitong Ochrama Lagopus Balsa Virola Spp. Banak Anisoptera Thurifera Bella -Rosa Guibourtia Arnoldiana Benge Detarium Senegalese Boire Guibourtia Demeusii Bubinga Prioria Copaifera Cativo Antiaris Africans Chenchen Dalbergia Retusa Concobolo Cordia Spp. Cordia Diospyros Spp. Ebony Aucoumea Klaineanal Gaboon Chlorophora Excelsa Iroko Acacia Koa Koa Pterygota Macrocarda Koto Shores. Negrosensis Red Lauan Pentacme Controta White Lauan Shores. Polysperma Tanguile Terminalia Superba Limbs Aniba Duckei Louro Khaya Ivorensis Africa Mahogany Swietenia Macrophylla Amer. Mahogany Tieghemella Heckelii Makore Distemonanthus Benthamianus Movingui Pterocarpus Soyauxii African Paduak Pterocarpus Angolensis Angola Paduak Aspidosperma Spp. Peroba Peltogyne Spp. Purpleheart Gonystylus Spp. Ramin Dalbergia Spp. Rosewood Entandrophragma Cylindricum Sapele Shorea.Philippinensis Sonora Tectona Grandis Teak Lovoa Trichiliodes Tigerwood Milletia.Laurentii Wenge Microberlinia Brazzavillensis Zebrawood C. Exemptions. The Council may exempt an item or product from the requirements of this section upon evidence that such item or product has no acceptable non -tropical wood equivalent, or is required in a designated;' historical building; and D. Directing City staff to modify its procedures regarding purchasing by requiring each wood vendor to note on each invoice for wood_ products; supplied to the City of Santa Clarita the identity of the manufacturer of the products, and that the material supplied is not tropical wood, and each Public works general contractor shall certify that no tropical hardwoods are being used by prime or subcontractors in the awarded project. SECTION 2. The City Clerk shall certify to the adoption of this resolution and certify this record to be a full, true, correct copy of the action taken. PASSED AND APPROVED this day of MAYOR ATTEST: CITY CLERK , 19_. I HEREBY CERTIFY that the foregoing Resolution was duly adopted by the City. Council of the City of Santa Clarita at a regular meeting thereof, held on the day of 19_, by the following vote of the Council: AYES: COUNCILMEMBERS: NOES: COUNCIL11EMBERS: ABSENT: COUNCILMEMBERS: CITY CLERK 22 The Green Consumer Introduction. 23 S. Rain Forests and Biodiversity The world is losing trees—indeed, entire forests—at an astonish- ing rate. And as the trees disappear, so do thousands of species of other living things. And that may be the least of our problems. The disappearance of trees has been implicated in worsening the greenhouse effect and in air pollution in general. The most devastating deforestation has taken place in the world's tropical rain forests. Occupying only 6 percent of the ramtall is2uu centimeters (about 80 inches) or more each year. This warm, moist environment allows tall, broad-leaved trees to flour- ish. The trees allow little sunlight onto the forest floor. Itis believed that the majority of the earth's species lives in these unique environments, in particular insects and flowering plants. Tropical forests are being permanently destroyed at an esti- mated rate of 27 million acres each year, mostly through wholesale burning designed to clear land for agricultural use—in particular, the raising of beef cattle for export chiefly to North America for fast-food hamburgers. (See "Fast Food and the Environment.") An additional 13 million acres of tropical forest are logged, usually in a fashion guaranteed not to ensure the forests' future. To put these 40 million acres a year into perspective, we can estimate that each year an area of forest larger than the state of California disappears from the earth. What does the loss of these trees, insects, and plants have to do with us? Let's start with the trees. In their growth process, trees both store carbon dioxide and convert it into living tissue—wood. 24 The Green Consumer both store carbon dioxide and convert it into living tissue—wood. In one day a single deciduous tree can absorb about three-quarters of an ounce of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, roughly 16 pounds a year. When that tree is burned, it not only releases carbon dioxide, it removes one of nature's devices for absorbing it. As a result, the carbon dioxide released through the burning of tropical forests is thought to contribute at least 20 percent of the global warming problem. (As stated earlier, carbon dioxide is responsible for about 50 percent of the greenhouse effect.) Also released during burning are methane and nitrous oxides, which contribute further to the warming problem. Of course, not only trees are lost during the burning and logging. Conservative estimates put the number of plant, animal, and insect species native to rain forests at two million. Most esti- mates put the number somewhere between 5 million and 80 million species; one researcher has estimated that there are as many as 30 million insect species in tropical forests alone. Al- though only a fraction of 1 percent of these species vanishes each year—approximately 4,000 to 6,000 species are lost to deforesta- tion annually—the rate is thousands of times greater than the natural rate of extinction. Indications are that, as deforestation continues, the rate of extinctions could become higher still. As with the trees, these insects and plants affect our daily lives, and their demise. could have immediate economic conse- quences. In 1970, for example, a leaf fungus blighted U.S. corn- fields from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, eliminating 15 percent of the entire crop and pushing up corn prices by 20 percent. Losses to farmers exceeded $2 billion. The situation was saved by a blight -resistant germ plasm whose genetic ancestry traces back to variants of corn from one of the plant's native habitats in Mexico. Moreover, according to Norman Myers, a consultant on the environment and development, half of the purchases in your neighborhood pharmacy, whether drugs or pharmaceuticals, derives from wild organisms. The full commercial value of these wildlife -based products worldwide, says Myers, is $40 billion a year. Remember those poison darts used as weaponsby tribesmen in Tarzan movies? That "poison," curare, derived from a South American tree bark, is an important anesthetic used during heart, eye, and abdominal surgery. And curare cant be synthesized in the laboratory. Derivatives from the rosy periwinkle offer a 99 Introduction i 25 percent chance of remission for victims of lymphocytic leukemia, as well as a 58 percent chance of recovery from Hodgkin's disease. There are thousands of tropical plants that have become valuable for industrial use. First and foremost is rubber. Today, over half the world's commercial rubber is produced in Malaysia and Indonesia. The sap from Amazonian copaiba trees, poured straight into a fuel tank, can power a truck; 20 percent of Brazil's diesel fuel comes from that tree. And then there is food. Thousands of tropical plants have edible parts, and some are superior to our most common crops. In New Guinea, for example, the winged bean, Psophocarpus tetragon- olobus, has been called a one -species supermarket: the entireplant— roots, seeds, stems, leaves, and flowers—is edible, and a coffeelike j beverage can be made from its juice. It grows like a weed, reaching a height of 15 feet in a few weeks, and has a nutritional value roughly equivalent to soybeans. There are thought to be many such plants that may be developed for commercial use in this and ! many other countries, creating foods to feed a hungry world. All told, humans have exploited less than one-tenth of 1 percent of naturally occurring species. And as thousands disap- pear each year, along with them go their potential. Agriculture in tropical rain forests is possible, say the experts, if practiced according to the principles of "sustainable use." This refers to any ongoing activity that doesn't permanently degrade the forest, such as the collection of rubber, nuts, or herbs. Environ- mentalists working with the timber industry have attempted sustainable logging programs, but such plans haven't yet been put into large-scale use. What You Can Do. It may seem unfeasible to directly affect the burning and harvesting of tropical forests thousands of miles away, but there are actions you can take. Among them: ❑ Don't buy wood harvested from endangered tropical forests. Instead, look for woods that are forested in temperate regions of Europe, North America, and Japan, or are harvested in sustainably managed tropical timber projects. These include ash, beech, birch, cherry, elm, hickory, oak, poplar, and black walnut.. ❑ Avoid buying beef products from livestock raised in tropical regions. Indentifying such beef, however, is not always easy. C� THE LAND Rain Just as we are wantonly destroying the Earths at- mosphere, people are wreaking similar havoc on the land. The best example of this may be the destruc- tion of the world's rain forests. In just the last 30 years, more than 40 percent of the tropical forests that belt the equator have been. felled or burned. Dubbed the "Earth's deposit box" for the millions of plants and animals they spawn and protect, rain forests are disappearing at such a rapid rate that scientists predict all may be razed by the end of the twenty-first century. Harvard biologist E. 0. Wilson calls this "the greatest extinction since the end of the age of dinosaurs." If acid rain is the most clandestine of pollutants, the destruction of rain forests may be the most public of environmental debacles. Their preserva- tion has become the cause cekbre of the hip and famous the world around. Celebrities by the dozens have lent their names and images to the cause. Sting showed up in face paint and posed with South American natives deep in the forest. Pop artist Keith Haring bought land in Brazil to help preserve a piece of the forest and encouraged others to do the same. Virgin Records released an album called "Spirit of the Forest," featuring a battery of international pop stars. Several of the songs were actually re- corded in a Brazilian jungle. Ben and Jerry's intro- duced "Rain Forest Crunch" ice cream. American composer Philip Glass teamed up with avant-garde theater director Gerald Thomas to create a rain forest -inspired opera, which premiered in Rio de Janeiro. Polish -born sculptor Frans Krajcberg de- voted an entire exhibition to 24 burned and broken 5 Forests 93 wood sculptures and panels inspired by the destruc- tion. A gaggle of celebs, led by Madonna and mem- bers of the Grateful Dead,. hosted a fund-raising evening of song and dance at the Brooklyn Acad- emy of Music, dubbed "Don't Bungle the Jungle." Even Kermit the Frog got in on the action, starring in a film called "Save the Rain Forests." The list of similar celebrity -for -the -rain -forest actions goes on and on. Yet, despite all the glamorous publicity, the rain forests continue to burn. In Brazil alone, an area the size of Nebraska -76,000 square miles—is dec- imated each year. Whether the attention excited by $500 -per -head benefits or well -intended testimoni- als makes a difference is hard to assess. But while the rain forests continue to be destroyed by a com- bination of misdirected government policy, greed heart-rending poverty, and ignorance of the most basic environmental concerns, any hint of public awareness should be welcomed. At first glance, rain forests can be off-putting. The jungles are soggy, humid places crawling with bugs and reptiles. A dense canopy 200 feet over- head screens out most sunlight, and is so thick a heavy rain takes 10 minutes to trickle down to the ground. The "rain" in the forest's name is well- deserved. The green band of tropical woodlands that encircles the earth 10 degrees north and south of the equator receives more than 80 inches of precipitation each year. If the appeal of the rain forests to the celebrity set remains something of a mystery, their necessity is not; though they ac- count for just seven percent of the Earth's land THE LAND Rain Forests surface, they contain almost half of all its trees and more than 10 million species of plants and animals. The forests' role on the planet is simple: for hundreds of millions of years they have nurtured and protected a multitude of life forms. Because green plants convert carbon dioxide to oxygen, they serve as a kind of sponge, helping to soak up the excess man is pumping into the atmosphere. But today, thanks to humankind's insatiable greed for land and profit, and the planet's rapidly proliferating population, the rain forests' days are numbered. Rain forests once dominated Indonesia, Zaire, Papua–New Guinea, Burma, Malaysia, the Philip- pines, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia; and Venezuela. These nations share not just tropical forests, but overwhelming national debt, high unemployment, and a large percentage of foreign investment in their arable lands. But it is the forests through which the Amazon River flows in Brazil that have captured so much of the public's attention, in part because the region (two thirds the size of the continental U.S.) is the most biologically diverse wilderness on the globe— and because its management has proven to be an ecological nightmare. A tenth of the world's species, most of them still unidentified, five in the jungles of Brazil. An Ama- zon pond the size of a tennis court may contain more species of fish than all the rivers in Europe combined. New trees and insects are discovered there daily. More than 50,000 plant species and 3,000 types of fish are part of the Amazon ecosys- tem. (By comparison, North America has about 17,000 plants, and Europe only 150 types of fresh- water fish.) During burn season, August through October, more than 5,000 fires rage across the region each day, reducing once -lush forests to little more than charred deserts. Fanning, ranching, log- ging, mining, and road -building are rapidly taking their. toll. In 1975, just 0.6 percent of the Amazon was deforested. Today more than 12 percent has 94 been cut. Since every acre is different, the destruc- tion of even a small area can result in the extinction of uncounted, and some as yet unnamed species. Estimates of worldwide losses vary widely. Some say 50 million acres are lost each year, the United Nations says only 17 .million. The World Wildlife Fund says 25 to 50 acres a minute are cut or burned. But concrete.numbers are not necessary to affirm the destruction of the rain forests—or to pre- dict a future without them. The decimation of forests is hardly new. Before people learned to grow their own food roughly 10,000 years ago, the Earth boasted 15.5 billion acres of forest and woodland. As civilization expanded, that acreage has shrunk by a third. When newly shorn lands are mismanaged, the result has inevitably been the same worldwide, whether in the tropics or on snow-covered mountains: soil loss, droughts, floods, disrupted water supplies, and a legacy of unproductive land. Because of the wildlife they nurture and the car- bon dioxide they absorb, the destruction of the tropical woodlands may be the most dangerous de- forestation we have yet witnessed. British environ- mentalist Norman Myers insists, "If patterns persist, it may be the worst biological debacle since life's . first emergence on the planet 3.6 billion years ago." The contemporary plunderers of the Amazon jun- gle are following a tradition that began when rubber, was discovered in the river basin in the early part of this century. The potential for profit attracted thou- sands of "investors," including Henry Ford; who bought up millions of acres of rain forest and named it Fordlandia. But the spread of disease among the Indian workers and abuse of the forests quickly killed off the rubber business in South America. Malaysia then became the primary source, and 90 percent of the rain forests there have since been cut. The effect of rain forest loss is simple yet wide- ranging. When the trees are cut down, sunlight and dry, hot winds pour in. Tropical soil is poor—most THE LAND Rain Forests of the nutrients in the rain forest are stored not in soil, as happens in temperate forests, but in the trees themselves. So a slight change in moisture or temperature can hold drastic results for the shallow - rooted trees. Once the trees are gone, so is shelter for plants and animals. Since few saplings are re- planted, devastated rain forests resemble deserts, littered with the charred debris of burned and rot- ting timber. Next to birth control, few biological activities are as important to the future of the planet's environ- ment as thriving rain forests. Each year the Earth's Population—all users of wood products in one form or another—grows by 85 million people. Every year, 5 million acres of tropical woodland are cut for fire- wood. Ninety-five percent of the next 5 billion people will be bom in developing countries, population watch- ers estimate. That growth implies continued devas- tation of the rain forests, as 40 percent of the world still uses wood as a primary source of heat. Preservation of the planet's fragile ecosystems depends on long-term sustainable development. But "sustainable development" and "ecosystems" mean little to governments of poverty -riddled countries, desperate for cash to pay huge foreign debts. De- veloping nations have accumulated debts totaling $1.3 trillion; Brazil's is the largest at more than $124 billion. In countries where forests are ravaged by peasants seeking food, preserving ecosystems has not been a priority. Overpopulation is a big problem—and an envi- ronmental problem—in most developing nations, and contributes to their perilous economic situations. More than half of the globe's population now lives in coun- tries that are in part tropical, and where the stan- . (lard of living is declining. According to UNICEF estimates, more than 14 million children under the age of four starve to death each year in tropical and subtropical countries. Every day more than 40,000 young children die from starvation and associated diseases—and yery few of them or their family R. members understand the concept of sustainable development. Protecting rain forests—like many conservation efforts—is a monumentally complex task. It is im- portant for celebrities to rally around tropical.for- ests, and may be essential to sensitize others to their destruction. But it is equally important to un- derstand the squalor that encourages debt -ridden governments to condone the destruction and allow it to continue. Sustainable economic growth must become the priority in these tropical regions—but at the same time, we must all help lay the groundwork for their protection.