Central America Weakens Forest Shield Against Future Droughts

[Judi Lynn]

By Daniel Salazar




SAN JOSE, Dec 31 2017 (IPS) - Jazziel Baca lives in the municipality of Esquías, in western Honduras, one of the areas hardest hit by the southern pine beetle (Dendroctonus frontalis), which damaged almost 500,000 hectares of forest in that Central American country between 2013 and 2015.

Supposedly, the pest that was destroying the pines would stop spreading with the rains, but the rainy season came and there was no rain. He told IPS that apart from fewer trees, his town also has less water, the soil has eroded and some of the neighboring communities face drought.

This is not the only problem causing them to run out of water.

In Honduras, forest coverage shrank by almost a third, from 57 percent in 2000 to 41 percent in 2015, explained by an increase of monoculture, extractive projects, livestock production and shifting cultivation. It is the Central American country with the greatest decline in forest cover, in a region where all of the countries, with the exception of Costa Rica, are destroying their forests.

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/2017/12/central-america-weakens-forest-shield-future-drought

Environment and energy:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1127114638

[GaryCnf]

1. But surely you understand

that western priorities are required to attract the neoliberal saviors and their global capital. Respect for such niceties as indigenous cultures AND environments cannot stand in the way of that.

Thank you for illuminating this tragedy for DUers more used hearing the endless drone of the "glories" of capitalism's hand in Mesoamerica.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Hundreds of thousands of innocent lives destroyed ruthlessly by the "superior" US capitalists

and their puppet dictators.

Genocide, horror, brain-numbing terrorism, torture, all sacrifices for the benefit of the racially "superior" 1% who own the corporations and the Congresswhores who do their bidding, and the European-descended idiot descendants of the invaders, paving the way for their fondest dreams, at the total expense of those who didn't have the wealth to move to Miami to escape the living hell the oligarchs have created for the helpless.

Thank you, GFaryCnf.