India's demand for teak wood is endangering Ecuador's rainforests and agricultural land ISHAN KUKRETI | New Delhi
ECUADOR IS witnessing an invasion. The aggressor is gaining land at a rapid pace, damaging the Latin American country’s flora and fauna diversity. And India is fuelling this takeover, though in an indirect way.
The invader is teak and India’s appetite for teak wood is the reason behind the spread of the tree in Ecuador. The process started in 2013, when Myanmar, which was India’s top source of teak (Tectona grandis), banned felling of the tree. Ecuador filled the vacuum and is now exporting 95 per cent of its teak wood to India, states Ecuador’s environment ministry data. The country’s teak export to India has seen a 50 per cent spike since 2012-13. According to Xavier Elizalde, executive director of the Ecuadorian Association of Producers of Teak and Tropical Timber, Ecuador is making a profit of $30 million a year from teak export.
However, teak is not native to Ecuador and is exhibiting invasive behaviour to survive. The tree grows fast—is ready to be cut in six to eight years—and regrows at least six times if the main root is not damaged. It is difficult to uproot because the main root runs 6 m underground, drawing more than its share of water and minerals. What’s worse, because teak is a non-native, there are no natural agents to quickly decompose its leaves. “Since teak came, nothing else grows. Cotton, tomatoes, nothing,” says Hacienda Vera, a teak farmer of Guayas province. And the growth in teak plantations has caused deforestation and loss of agricultural land. According to Global Forest Watch, an initiative by the World Resources Institute to monitor forests across the world, Ecuador lost about 0.4 million ha tree cover between 2001 and 2015. About 30 per cent of this loss (0.18 million ha) was between 2012 and 2015. How much of this is due to spread of teak is yet to be studied, but trends point at teak.
This story is from the October 16, 2017 edition of Down To Earth.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the October 16, 2017 edition of Down To Earth.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
The Next Pandemic
Buoyed by climate change and global trade, pathogens that cause disease outbreaks in food crops are spreading far and wide. They are also evolving fast to reproduce quickly and infect new hosts
India Feels The Heat This May
INDIA WAS under an intense heatwave spell in the second half of May, with temperatures soaring over the northwest region, according to data released by the India Meteorological Department (IMD).
POWER OF PAAN
Betel leaves are not just an integral part of India's culture, but also hold many benefits. Add them to your list of healthy greens
'Fitness our evolutionary advantage, not longevity'
Nobel laureate VENKI RAMAKRISHNAN's latest book, Why We Die, covers a journey that starts in the 1800s, when British biologists Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace proposed natural selection, and continues to this day, as researchers investigate anti-ageing compounds. But how close are we really to cheating ageing and death? In an interview with ROHINI KRISHNAMURTHY, Ramakrishnan, who received the 2009 Nobel prize in chemistry, says the focus of research is on staying healthy for a bigger fraction of life. He also examines the causes of ageing, the drugs being explored to slow down this deterioration, the people involved in the research and a few controversial claims. Excerpts:
India capitulates on key accord at WIPO
The WIPO treaty on genetic resources is historic, but it will override vital safeguards in India's law to prevent bad patents
Wild guess
Despite being a significant source of greenhouse gases, wildfire emissions remain underestimated
A local national verdict
Issues of unemployment, price rise and agrarian distress seem to have shifted voter sentiment in the recent general elections
Native nutrition
THE LUNCH menu at the Rani Kajal Jeevan Shala School in Kakrana village of Madhya Pradesh shows a healthy mix of pulses, vegetables and millets.
Look Beyond Dust
Reinvent National Clean Air Programme to focus on fine particulate matter and trans-boundary pollution
PLAN THEM COOL
As urban India turns into a heat trap, the government must focus on improving cities' liveability
