Paraguay's environment in bad shape
AFP
ASUNCION, Wed. — Rapid deforestation, industrial pollution of rivers and streams, and farmers’ widespread abuse of pesticides are taking a serious toll on Paraguay’s environment, specialists say.
In the last 40 years, some eight million hectares of wooded land have been deforested in the eastern part of the country, according to official statistics. The vast majority of the clear-cutting has occurred in the last 20 years.
Government commissions and environmental groups are putting the finishing touches to what they say are less-than-encouraging reports to be presented next month at the UN-sponsored Earth summit in Rio de Janeiro.
Paraguay is divided into two climatically different regions: the arid, semi-desert West and the tropical, heavily forested East.
The eastern part has sustained the most environmental damage and experts estimate that 75 per cent of the forests there have been felled, at a rate of up to150,000ha a year.
The worst destruction occurred in 1989 when, after the fall of General Alfredo Stroessner from political power, thousands of peas ants rushed into eastern jungles hoping to stake a claim and gain titles to unoccupied land.
The squatters’ move-in prompted large landowners whose property had been occupied to deforest the land in an effort to show it was being used and to underscore their control.
The confrontation was brought under control in 1990, but only after thousands of hectares had been deforested.
Alarmed by what some ecologists saw as a devastating development, the World Bank in 1991 purchased 60,000 hectares of forest in the Mbaracayu mountain range and handed them over to the Paraguayan Government for "perpetual conservation".
Taking a cue from the bank’s move, the administration of President Andres Rodriguez bought another 150,000ha of forest in the same area and put them under similar protection.
Alone with the deforestation crisis, Paraguay’s rivers and streams have come under siege from industrial pollutants.
The famed "blue lake" of Ypacarai, 37km outside Asuncion, has turned gray due to pollutants.
Industrialists have said they are prepared to take measures to cut down on pollution, but not without international financial he! in installing filters an waste treatment facilities.
Agricultural expansion also poses a threat to the environment in Paraguay, experts say. In particular, production of soybeans and cotton has soared, most of which is exported.
Peasants who invaded the forest lands of Alto Parana and Itapua in eastern Paraguay have replaced ancient trees with hundreds of thousands of hectares of the two cash crops.
Along a 300-km stretch of highway between Ciudad del Este and Encarnacion, there is not a tree in sight where forests once stood, all replaced by planted fields, said Agriculture Ministry officials.
The agriculture boom has led to an increase in the use of toxic pesticides which, although banned, are not controlled and have been linked to several deaths in recent years. — AFP
Source : The Straits Times, 21st May 1992
Recycling Point Dot Com
(C) 2000 All Rights Reserved