Global Ecological Problems and Issues

The descendants of the ancient maya, the lacandon maya indians living in the Chiapas rainforest, the home of the famous Mexican Zapatista rebellion, still practise simplified forms of the methods that made these rather impressive population densities possible.

Lacandons clear small plots inside the forest, the size of which is usually a little bit more or a little bit less than one hectare. The feled trees and branches are left on the ground in order to prevent erosion and to reduce leaching of the nutrients into deeper soil layers. Fast-growing tree-like perennials like banana and papaya are planted immediately after the clearing of the forest, in order to reduce the loss of nutrients. Other fruit trees like guavas, plums, custard apples, pineapples, cacao, avocados and citrus fruits are also planted. In an old plot that is just cleared again for farming, there is already a number of fruit trees. On the trunks of the trees climbers like yams are grown, and maize, cassava, sweet potatoes, rice, sugarcane and other crops are planted between the trees.

The lacandons do not concentrate certain plants to separate compartments in tidy and straight rows. On the contrary, they make a point of not planting clusters of the same plant species within three metres of the same variety. The idea of this practise is to minimize the spread of plant-spesific pests and diseases and to make the best use of the available nutrients.

In conventional, western-type gardening it takes a lot of work to keep the spaces between different crops clear of weeds. In the lacandon system there are no spaces between food crops because every square inch is covered by different crops that are grown on purpose. This does not eliminate the need for weeding, but reduces it in a very significant way.

The same plot is cultivated from three to seven years in a row. After this the weeds become a major problem, and the land is left for fallow for five years or more. After the fallow period it is again cleared for farming. But even during the fallow period the fruit trees growing on the plot continue producing food for human consumption.

A lacandon milpa with the size of 0,4 hectares can produce two and a half tons of maize and an equivalent amount of tree and root crops in a year. In the same area cattle-raising produces the maximum of 10-50 kilograms of meat per hectare, annually.

The lacandon system already gives us a vague idea of what could be done if the rainforest lands were cultivated with somewhat similar way.

However, the lacandon system is not the optimal system we should have in mind. It should be relatively easy to develop multistorey rainforest gardening systems that are still much more productive. The lacandon mayas only grow relatively small fruit trees in their milpas, and many very productive and promising food-producing trees like peach palms, ingas, breadfruits, jackfruits and plantains are unknown to them.

According to C.R. Clement and H. Villachica the Amazonian peach palm cultivations can yield up to 30 tons of fruit per hectare, annually. In other words, the peach palm cultivations can produce between 2500 and 500 times more protein and calories suitable for human consumption than cattle ranching. And this is a short term comparison: on the long run the difference is still much more dramatic, because cattle ranching can typically be continued for five or seven years, only, before the land has to be abandoned.

World's mountainous areas cover an area of about 30 million square kilometres and are a home to about six hundred million people. Mountains are very important places because all the world's major rivers come from the mountains, and because more than half of the humanity depends on mountains for their water supply.

In spite of their importance mountainous areas have often been seriously neglected by different governmental programmes and it has been estimated that 80 per cent of the world's mountain-dwellers live below the poverty line. Mountain people often feel left out and bitter, and it is no coincidence that of the 27 major armed conflicts that were fought in the world in 1999, 23 were in mountainous countries.

In steeply sloping hills and mountains topsoil is quickly lost if annual crops are planted without complex terracing systems. The fertile topsoil layer accumulated during tens of thousands of years may be washed away in a few years.

Besides terracing, the problem can be avoided by using suitable combination of trees and shrubs and annual crops. Trees thrive on steep hillslopes, even in places where hardly any soil can be seen. Their roots can penetrate deep in small cracks in the rock to acquire the necessary nutrients and moisture. Trees and bushes grown on densely planted rows along the contour lines can also capture soil and thus create, little by little, level terraces on which also other types of crops can be grown. Or, alternatively, the trees can be used to stabilize more conventional terraces in order to reduce the heavy maintenance work.

Ancient Greece lost, already thousands of years ago, almost all its topsoil due to intensive farming and grazing. After this the Greeks started to grow olive trees on eroded mountain slopes where other crops could no longer be grown. This saved the economy of the Greek civilization, which in those times included a large part of the whole Mediterranean region.

Tree crops could become as important for most other mountain ecosystems, as well. A few years ago the government of Pakistan started a very interesting programme, the purpose of which was to produce healthy cooking oil for the people.

Pakistan consumes about two million tons of food oil, every year. Of this only 0.8-0.9 million tons are produced in Pakistan, and 1.2-1.1 million tons have to be imported with an annual cost of about 40 billion rupies. The government of Pakistan decided that it should start promoting large-scale cultivation of olive trees in two mountainous provinces: North Western Frontier Province and Baluchistan. If a relatively small part of the wastelands in these two provinces would be transformed to olive plantations, Pakistan would become self-sufficient in food oils and might even be able to export olive oil to India and other countries.

The programme would have used indigenous olive varieties as rootstocks, and graft better-producing varieties brought from Afghanistan to them. The government of Pakistan also thought that the programme would be likely to have a positive impact on public health in Pakistan, India and other South Asian countries.

People in Pakistan, India and other South Asian countries have, on average, thinner blood veins than for instance Europeans, North Americans and Africans. This means that South Asians are extremely vulnerable to heart diseases if they consume a lot of unhealthy food oils that contribute to a disease called atherosclerosis, in which the blood veins are gradually blocked by fats accumulating into the walls of the veins. Indian cardiologists, doctors specializing in heart disease, who have worked both in India and in Europe have remarked, that in India the average age of their patients was 45 years while in Europe it was 65 years. People in South Asia have greatly increased their consumption of the most unhealthy fats, which may have very serious consequences for their health. The poorer people for whom the problem is too little fat and not too much of it may also suffer from the threatening epidemic of heart disease: if a larger part of the rseources of the public health care system will be devoted to treating the heart problems of the middle and upper classes, less resources will be available for treating and preventing other kinds of disease.

The production of olive oil for the South Asian markets would have improved the situation in a very important way, because olive oil seems to contribute to the prevention of heart disease. Up to 80 per cent of olive oil consists of "good" fatty acids that actually reduce the amount of "bad" fats (bad cholesterol) in the blood. Only 4-12 per consists of the harmful fats. This means that olive oil actually reduces the amount of the substances that contribute to the blocking of the arteries. Heart disease is four times more common in Great Britain and the USA than in Mediterranean countries like Greece and Italy, where people consume vast quantities of olive oil.

Unfortunately the government of Pakistan was, at the end of the year 2002, forced to cut its funding for the olive growing programme from 40 million to 2 million rupees per year. We should hope that it will become soon possible to restart the programme, because it would be an important way of providing employment for millions of families living in the remote mountainous areas of Pakistan.

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