World-Wide: Why trees must have rights
Without trees we wouldn’t be here. Trees provide us with wood for us to build, paper to write on as well as a source to burn for heat. They protect both us and the soil from the sun and the rain. They cool the air in hot dry weather by the transpiration of water vapour into the atmosphere. Their roots take water and nutrients from the soil and help bind the soil together on hills and mountain-slopes.
Most importantly, they act as carbon sinks and manufacture oxygen: counterbalancing global warming. Even in death they enrich the soil. In November 2008 scientific findings were published, establishing that the release of the chemical Terpene from tree canopies leads to cloud formation that cools the climate. Given the ancient forests’ massive canopies, these findings serve to underline and reinforce the critical role of trees and wilderness in maintaining a viable atmosphere. (1) Logging continues on an unprecedented scale and rate, destroying the lungs of the planet. At the polar opposite end of the scale, let me give you an example closer to home. In the past five years, London councils have chopped down almost 40,000 street trees, including some more than 100 years old. Some were aged, diseased or dying, but 40 per cent were removed because of insurance claims. Healthy mature trees are being felled by risk-averse insurers and councils because of the suspicion that they may affect neighbouring properties with subsidence, or fall on people. Yet a report commissioned by the London Assembly said that only one per cent of tree-removals were justified. It found that, despite the key role they play in combating climate change, and creating pleasant environments (the report’s own words), Britain’s urban are under threat. Only 11 per cent of trees in towns are now between 50 and 100 years old, the survey discovered; only two per cent are more than 100 years old. That means: when they get big, they get chopped down. (2) But trees remain largely unprotected; they do not have rights. We accord rights to abstract entities such as corporations, churches, universities, councils, governments – yet, unlike trees or any plant matter they are intangible. They are abstract concepts that we, humans have created. We have created the legal rights for a corporation to stake its claim on a piece of land, call it property and then use or abuse that land in whichever manner it sees fit. http://www.theecologist.org/pages/archive_detail.asp?content_id=2019
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