Agriculture and Environment: Wood Pulp

Introduction

The environmental problems resulting from forest plantations are a subject of much debate. Proponents of plantations maintain that they are environmentally beneficial, allowing efficient production of forest products on a small area of land and therefore easing pressures on natural forests. Some argue that plantations have many of the ecological attributes of natural forests (Wadsworth 1997).

By definition, however, forest plantations are large monoculture areas, usually of exotic species, and so contain far less biodiversity than natural forests. One of the major environmental issues of concern, then, is whether plantations are created on areas recently cleared of natural forests or on pasture or degraded agricultural land. Globally, most plantations have been created after the conversion of natural forest or logged-over and degraded forest areas.

Pulp plantations can have a number of negative environmental effects, primarily habitat conversion and deforestation, pollution from agrochemical inputs, and environmental degradation as soil quality and water cycles are altered. The increased burning associated with forest clearing is also a serious concern.

These can be mitigated to some degree through good planning and vigilant management. The best standards of management are not always employed in developing countries (precisely where pulp and paper plantations are expanding most rapidly) because of constraints on resources and capacity as well as the lack of incentives and enforcement of existing laws and regulations that should affect such operations.