Stardate 20010821.0621 (On Screen): "Efforts to save the world's most important forests should be concentrated in just 15 countries, the U.N. Environment Program says." I find that word
just to be interesting in that statement; it suggests that this is some sort of restraint, or maybe
triage, or something like that. But when you look at the list, it's hardly restrained. Between them, the 15 selected countries represent more than half the surface area of the earth. For instance, three of them are Canada, the US and Mexico. That pretty much sews up all of North America. Three more are Russia, India and China, which is well over half of Eurasia. Then you've got Brazil, Columbia, Venezuala, Peru and Bolivia; that's about three quarters of South America. I suppose it's reasonable to not worry about the (nonexistent) forests of Algeria or Mongolia, for instance, and surely the fate of the forests of Andorra are not going to be of global concern. Still, this statement strikes me as being pointless. But then, a lot of what comes out of these UN bodies these days seems to be
pointless. It may be that the world's forests are in crisis. (That's been a subject of considerable debate.) Seems like the right way to go about dealing with it is to ignore countries and identify specific forests (e.g. "The Amazon Rainforest" or "The Cascade Mountain Range") and then go from there.
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