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CNN Sunday Morning

Growing Concerns About World's Forest

Aired April 21, 2002 - 11:35   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Tomorrow is Earth Day, a day to draw attention to environmental issues. As people prepare to mark the occasion, there are growing concerns about the world's forest.

CNN's Gary Strieker explains.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GARY STRIEKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): The growing crisis facing forests on the planet is even more serious than scientists had believed.

JONATHAN LASH, WORLD RESOURCES INSTITUTE: They saw the rapid loss of the last remaining old growth forests in the world, the forest frontiers.

STRIEKER: Ten years after the Rio Earth Summit, 32 years since the first Earth Day, disturbing new findings from the World Resources Institute's Global Forest Watch.

Extensive ground research, combined with digital and satellite mapping shows vast areas of the world's remaining old growth and primary forests are disappearing at an alarming rate.

LASH: These are places that are irreplaceable in terms of their value in conserving biodiversity, important cultures, and the services that those ecosystems provide for human kind.

STRIEKER: Among the findings, in only 50 years, Indonesia has lost almost half its forests, mostly by illegal logging, an area the size of Massachusetts deforested each year.

In Russia, the unbroken semi-arctic Tiga (ph) is quickly disappearing. Only a quarter of its area remains undisturbed. One conclusion researchers draw from these findings, the idea of virgin forests inhabited only by wildlife and indigenous people is fast becoming a myth.

DIRK BRYANT, GLOBAL FOREST WATCH: The future of forests tomorrow is really logging concessions, mining concessions, protected areas. How we manage those forests will determine the future of our forests tomorrow.

STRIEKER: They say some countries have enacted new laws to better protect and manage their forests, but in many places, those laws are not enforced. At the current rate of destruction, they say, 40 percent of the world's intact forests will disappear in ten to 20 years, and other researchers warn the damage to the Amazon and other tropical rainforests could be irreversible within a decade.

Experts are calling for the forest crisis to be given top priority at the Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg later this year. Another summit ten years from now might be too late. Gary Strieker, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WHITFIELD: Amid ongoing environmental concerns, there is a growing effort to find alternative energy sources. Michigan's Governor John Engler unveiled a plan last week called "Next Energy," and he joins us now from Lansing to talk about the plan. Thanks for joining us, Governor.

GOVERNOR JOHN ENGLER, MICHIGAN: Thank you very much, Fredricka, great to be with you this morning.

WHITFIELD: Well, thank you. So what is "Next Energy"?

ENGLER: Well, "Next Energy" is Michigan's strategy to position itself as the world leader in alternative energy technologies, alternative fuel technologies.

We really look at the auto industry at a great point of transition now, and over the next decade or decade and a half, you're going to see a transition that largely moves, I think, from a sole dependence on the internal combustion engine, to a whole host of varieties.

And I think in a decade or so, you'll see, I think, wide application of fuel cell technology and Michigan is the dominant manufacturer. We make more than a third of all the engines made for automobiles, and so we want to make sure that we're in the leading edge of that so there's an economic, as well as a solid environmental aspect to the "Next Energy" strategy.

And for Michigan, in a nutshell, what we're doing is creating what will be the global research headquarters, we believe. There's a lot of work being done, but there's no real global center for this. Detroit and Southeast Michigan is the logical location.