THE LOST PARADISE:

Rediscovering Sources of Wealth & Wellness from the Treasures of the Rainforest

By Wan Izzuddin Sulaiman

IF INTELLIGENCE MEANS the ability to take in and respond to information, then all organisms possess it, whether animal or plant, for they exchange signals and materials with their surroundings constantly. If intelligence means the capacity for solving puzzles or using language, then surely the ravens that clamour above me or the wolves that roam the far side of the mountains possess it. But if we are concerned with the power not merely to reason or use language, but to discern and define meanings, to evaluate actions in light of ethical principles, to pass on knowledge across generations through symbolic forms—then we are speaking about a kind of intelligence that appears to be the exclusive power of humans, at least on this planet.

Excerpt from Scott Russel Sanders, Mind in the Forest. Orion Magazine, Nov/Dec 2009.

If there is any paradise on earth, then that paradise could metaphorically be found somewhere in the rainforest. This is because the many reminiscent of paradise such as the grandeur, the beauty, and the abundance of life can all be found in the rainforest. In Southeast Asia lies the natural habitat of a 130 million years old nature’s gift to mankind, the tropical rainforest, a paradise on earth. Alfred Russel Wallace, a renowned naturalist who spent seven years wandering in the Southeast Asian rainforest and the jungles of the Malay Archipelago between 1854 - 1862 elegantly wrote,

“The first hour of morning in the equatorial regions, possesses a charm and a beauty that can never be forgotten. All nature seems refreshed and strengthened by the coolness and moisture of the past night; new leaves and buds unfold almost before the eye, and young shoots of the bamboo and other plants may be observed to have grown many inches since the preceeding day. The temperature is the most delicious conceivable. The slight chill of dawn, which was itself agreeable, is succeeded by an invigorating warmth; and the bright sunshine lights up the glorious vegetation of the tropics, and realizes all that the magic art of the painter or the glowing words of the poet, have pictured as their ideals of a terrestrial paradise . . ."   (Source: 'On the Climate & Vegetation of the Tropics,' an unpublished lecture given in Newcastle in 1867)

Much akin to the experience of the great naturalist, I traced my own profound love and passion for the rainforest from the constant and close intimacy I had with the jungles surrounding where I lived and grew up during the early years of my life. Born in a Malay kampung in rural Kelantan, northeast of the Malay peninsula in the 60s, the village where I was raised until the juvenile years was quintessentially surrounded by kebuns, or fruit orchards and smallholders rubber plantations. The village was also surrounded by many patches of small secondary forests called semak or belukar where lush green vegetations grew densely with each other competing for space, sunlight, water and air within a limited space. Dense undergrowth consisting of bunches of bamboo and rattan trees, ferns and yams, wild orchids, gingers and creepers, all sorts of wild berries unknown to me, and thorny shrubs impassable to walk through. The vivid images of vines came dangling on every branches and tree trunks, epiphytes of all shapes sprouting on the crevices found on tree barks, and those tall kebun trees like durian, mangosteen, duku, rambai and langsat trees (just to mention the familiar ones) bearing luscious fruits were the reminiscent of my paradise. These were the microcosm of the rainforest, recreated by our ancestors at the doorsteps of our homes. These were the playgrounds of us kampung boys, and girls too. We learned how to collect wild jambu butir banyak (pink guava), keladi (yams), kulat sisir (mushrooms) and kemunting berries. We acquired the skills to use tree branches and bamboos and nipah (Nypa fruiticans) trunks to make toys, floating rafts, bird traps, fishing rods, and hunting tools. There were also mini habitats of swampy sago and nipah palm stands where we would wade and rummage to search for the best fighting fish. We learned the skills of harvesting nectar from coconut inflorescence to make a juicy slightly fermented drink called tuak. We learned how to use the sheaths of banana trunks and the long runners of the creeper mempelas (Tetracera indica) to make ropes. We frequently used the berries of the local Rhododendron (senduduk or Melastoma malabathricum) as pellets for our bamboo air guns. We used the same senduduk berries which are purplish in colour and red resins oozing from the angsana bark to add colours to our wooden toys. When we have minor cuts and bruises we know how to treat them by applying the gel that oozes out from the stalk of keladi candik (Alocasia spp.), a wild yam. Our mothers would regularly collect the leaves of yet another yam, keladi kemoyang, (Homalomena pendula) and a weed kapal terbang (Chromalena odorata) to be grounded into herbal pastes used to wrap around their bellies post-partum. This story of intimacy with nature can go on and on. It was this intimacy and closeness to nature that inspired me to study Biology, Botany and Ecology for my Bachelor and Masters Degree education in the United States.  

Later in my adult life I again chanced these close encounters with the grandeur and the beauty that was of the rainforest, this time the encounter was of the professional kind. My vocation as a medical entomologist in the early 90s fortunately brought me to the fringes of the tropical jungles where Anopheline mosquitoes breed and spread deadly parasites such as the Malarial protozoans and the Filarial worms. During those days I spend countless nights trapping mosquitoes to investigate their bionomics and the zoonotic cycles, a phenomenon where pathogens are transferred from wild animals to humans through insect vectors. Those days and nights were literally filled with awe and many inspiring moments. The fresh and crisp air breathed by the forests, the cool mountain water came gushing into the streams, and the occasional lucky sightings of life tapir, elephants crossing a stream, wild roosters foraging along the jungle edges and hornbills swooping over the trees – were moments of epiphany, revered and remembered for the rest of my life. 

Perhaps this paradise is already lost, for the memories of luminescent mushrooms lighting the pitch darkness of the jungle floor, fireflies with blinking bellies dancing into the night and the mesmerizing sound of thousands of crickets, amphibians and other vociferous creatures singing the jungle chorus all night long are practically forever remain as memories of my paradise. Perhaps it was the best gift in my life. It is these cherished thoughts and recollections of paradise that I am turning into the subject of the love and passion of my life; the endless treasures, the great gift and the overwhelming providence of the rainforest to all of us.   

It is true that the rainforests evoke inspirations, solaces and epiphanies to those who contemplate. Beyond aesthetics, morality, intellectual and spiritual fullfilments, the rainforest provides practical social, economical and environmental benefits to the human civilization. Before goring the details on how human society can benefit from the rainforest, let us first take stock on this great ecosystem. The earth is divided into many distinct geographical and climatic areas or zones which are usually referred to as biomes or ecosystems. There are at least ten types of biomes or major ecosystems found on our planet. These are: (1) Tropical rainforest, (2) The deciduous forest, (3) The Taiga, (4) The Tundra, (5) The grasslands, (6) The Chaparral, (7) The desert, (8) The desert scrub, (9) The Savanna, and (10) The Alpine. Off course you can add a few more biomes such as the Mediterranean and the Polar regions and further sub-divide each of them.   

The tropical rainforest is definitely the most productive and perhaps the most important ecosystem compared to the rest mentioned above. Even though the tropical rainforest constitutes only about 6% of the total land area in the world today, it produces 40% of the earth’s oxygen and sinks the same portion of carbon dioxide from the air. Tropical rainforests around the world are the natural habitats of more than half of the plant species found on earth. The constant rainfall and the humid conditions of the tropical rainforest make these unique ecosystems very suitable for plants of various species and varieties to grow densely with each other, competing for the same resources in tight spaces within close proximity to each other.  A typical virgin tropical rain forest has more species of trees than any other biomes in the world. It is normal to find about 100 to 300 species thriving in one 2 1/2-acre (1-hectare) area of a virgin rainforest. This is a phenomenon referred to as “species diversity” or “biological richness”, terms that are now popularly known as “biodiversity”, a central reverberating theme in this book.

Figure 1: Locations of the tropical rainforest ecosystems on earth

(Source: http://www.blueplanetbiomes.org/rainforest.htm)

As you can see in the map (Figure 1), there are three major tropical areas in the world, i.e. South and Central America (known as the Amazon), East Africa and Southeast Asia. The entire tropical rainforests, situated between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn along the equatorial belt, cover around 30 million square kilometres, which is only about 10 % of the earth surface.   Compared to the other two counterparts, the Southeast Asian rainforests are the oldest, dating back to the Pleistocene Epoch 70 million years ago. In terms of biodiversity, the Southeast Asian rainforest is also richer than that of the Amazon or African rainforests. Southeast Asia, which is a 3,100 mile long chain of about 20,000 islands strung between the Malay Archipelago and Australasia covers an area of 1,112,000 square miles, almost twice the size of Alaska. The heart of this Southeast Asian rainforest ecosystem lies in the island of Borneo, which until late Cretaceous era was a part of a contiguous land mass extending from what is today the Malay archipelagos, encompassing the Malay peninsular, islands of Java, Sumatra and the Philippines. This land mass was named as Sundaland.  

This vast area with similar climatic conditions, thriving on epochs of stable biotic and abiotic conditions, have made possible the gradual evolution of the most diverse families of flora and fauna ever found in the world. Even though the tropical rainforest cover only less than 10 % of the earth’s surface, they contain more than half of the entire animal and plant species on earth. These dense tropical forests are indigenous to some 1,671 known species of amphibians, birds, mammals and reptiles. Of these, 13.9% are endemic, meaning they exist in no other places on earth, and 9.3% are threatened. Malaysia alone is home to at least 15,500 species of vascular plants, of which 23.2% are endemic. At least 1,000 of these vascular plants are palm trees. Between 1854 – 1862, the great Naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, a contemporary of Charles Darwin, lived in Southeast Asia and travelled widely in the region to collect and record specimens of living organisms. At the end of this eight year sojourn Wallace collected and brought back to London 125,600 specimens, 80,000 of these were different kinds of beetles. 

The Borneo rainforest itself is 130 million years old, making it the oldest rainforest in the world. The biological diversity in this third largest island in the world is mind boggling. It is the habitat of probably 15,000 species of flowering plants with 3,000 species of trees, 221 species of terrestrial mammals and 420 species of resident birds. The huge island is also home to 440 freshwater fish species (about the same as those found in Sumatra and Java combined). This astoundingly rich biodiversity is the results of millions of years of evolution and radiation of many endemic species of plants and animals. Many endemic mammalian species made Borneo their natural habitat, namely the orangutan, Asian elephant, the Sumatran rhinoceros, the Bornean clouded leopard, the Hose's civet and the dayak fruit bat. The World Wide Fund for Nature estimated that 361 animal and plant species have been discovered in Borneo since 1996. (Source: Wikipedia). Rainforests are also habitat to countless tiny organisms and micro-organisms – not easily seen with the naked eyes. A small patch of soil on the forest floor for example is a perfect micro-habitat for ants, spiders, lice, beetles, earthworms, millipedes, snails, slugs, nematodes, mites, flies larvae, fungi, bacteria and the algae – all exist in a complex interdependent web of life within a tightly knit sustainable community in self perpetuation millions of years old. 

It was once compared that one hectare of forest in North Michigan can only accommodate 8 species of trees whereas the same area in the Nicaraguan forest can support up to 200 species. Another study showed that 545 species of insects were collected in a hectare of forest in Costa Rica. The famous entomologist and great author E.O. Wilson once discovered 43 species of ants in a single tree in the tropics. In Southeast Asia trees of the rainforest are the main source of intrigue and mischief. A single family of tree dominates the forest – the Dipterocarpacea. Typically this family of trees constitutes 80% of the canopy and 40 % of the understory. Dipterocarps are characteristically trees with evergreen leaves and straight trunks reaching heights of up to 35 to 70 m (115 to 230 ft) or more, and trunk girths of over 2 m (6.6 ft) in diameter, therefore making these trees the best and the most valuable hardwood timber in the world. Examples of a typical dipterocarp are the species Seraya (Shorea curtisii) and Kapur (Dryobalanops aromatica) – two popular timber trees abundantly found throughout Malaysia.

This brings us to the subject of one of the most important utility of the rainforest, at least from the current economic point of view – its supply of timber to the world. Malaysia is one of the biggest producers of tropical hardwood timber with an export value of USD 6.1 billion in 2009 contributing to about 5% of its Gross Domestic Product. Despite being in the lead as the main exporter of timber for so many decades, and that forests were thought to be rapidly diminishing in size throughout the country, one official of the government was quoted as saying that the timber industry is not a “sunset” industry, and the industry will continue to grow to USD 17 billion a year by 2020, major importers being the European Union, United States and Japan. (Source: Malaysia aims to triple timber trade to USD 17 billion. Free Malaysia Today. 27 July, 2010). To harvest timbers we need to cut and clear the forests, and being the most fragile ecosystem on earth, once shattered it will require more than a century for the forests to recover. Even if we were to replant the trees, harvesting cycle will normally take 30 years. We shall find the answer later.   

First let us take cognizance on the actual stock of what remain of our rainforests. According to the Malaysian Timber Council, 59% or about 19.4 million hectares out of a total land area of 32.83 million hectares in Malaysia is forested or covered by forests. Of this 5.8 million hectares are in Peninsular Malaysia, 4.3 million hectares in Sabah and 9.24 million hectares in Sarawak. These forested areas do not include areas planted with crops such as oil palm and rubber. Most of these forested areas (74% or 14.29 million hectares) are gazetted as Permanent Reserved Forest (PRF or in Malay, HSK - Hutan Simpan Kekal) under the National Forestry Act 1984. The balance, 1.83 million hectares are devoted as National Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries such as the Taman Negara.

Are we doing a great justice to mankind by saving a big chunk of our forests for the future generations? The answer depends on how we interpret the figures. Even though a huge chunk of the land mass in the country is covered with forests (about 59%), and that 74% of these forests are here to permanently stay (those PRFs), only 8.7% of these “permanent forests”, a total of only 3,820,000 hectares, are classified as primary forest, the untouched, pristine forests that exist in its primordial conditions, the most bio-diverse and carbon-dense form of forest. The rest are secondary forests that have been disturbed mostly by human activities, especially due to and agricultural activities. Once the primary forests were cut for logs, these forests were either left alone to re-grow and recover by itself or were replanted with new trees. Today about 1,870,000 hectares of the forest covers in Malaysia are planted forests. Between 1990 and 2010, Malaysia lost its forest cover on an average of 96,000 ha or 0.43% per year. In total, between 1990 and 2010, Malaysia has lost 8.6% of its forest cover, or around 1,920,000 ha.

Malaysia and Southeast Asia are not the only regions suffering from the rainforest destruction. The World Resources Institute estimates that each year some 13.7 million hectares of tropical forest around the world cut down. It was estimated that in the 90’s tropical forests around the world were being destroyed at an alarming rate of 28 hectares (70 acres) a minute, or about 14 million hectares (35 million acres) per year. Over the past three decades more than 5 million square miles (about 2 million square miles) or about 20 % of the world’s rainforests have been cleared. In a landmark study, NASA documented the loss of the rainforests in the state of Rondonia in western Brazil between 2000 – 2008. Using the time lapse Terra satellite images, NASA’s scientists constructed a map based on a vegetation index to track the changes over the years. What was a 208,000 square kilometres (51.4 million acres) of pristine rainforest in 2000 has been rapidly cleared of vegetation, giving way to roads and agriculture. By 2003 67,764 square kilometres or 30 % of the original forest have been cleared. (Source: Earthobservatory.nasa.gov) 

In Southeast Asia two commodity crops stands out as the main cause of the destruction of the rainforest: rubber and oil palm trees. Rubber has more than a hundred years of history in Southeast Asia. The first seeds of Hevea braziliensis, as the name suggests, were smuggled from Brazil by the British to the Kew Gardens in London in 1887. In 1888 a batch of 22 of these seedlings were send to the Singapore Botanical Gardens for trial planting, thereafter the rest was history. Mr Henry Nicholas Ridley who was appointed the Director of the Singapore and Penang Botanical Gardens in 1888 travelled across the Malayan peninsular to promote the planting of this new crop. In 1895 the first rubber plantation, a mere 2 hectares of rubber trees were planted amidst a coffee plantation belonging to the Kinderley brothers in Kuala Selangor. This was quickly followed by bigger plantations in Malacca, which then spread throughout the country. Within less than one hundred years rubber became the most dominant commodity crop in Malaysia when it reached the apex in the 1970’s and 1980’s with a total planted area of more than 1.5million hectares. The global slump of rubber prices in the 80’s have caused many planters to switch to a new golden crop: oil palm. By 2005, rubber area represented only 23.45% (1.250 million ha.) of the plantation industry’s total area of 5,305,765 ha. The area planted with oil palm was 4 million hectares (75.50%). The remaining area was shared by cocoa (33,500 ha or 0.63%), pepper (13,745 ha or 0.26%) and tobacco (8,520 ha or 0.16%). In 2005, palm oil and its downstream products contributed RM28 billion in export revenue while the rubber industry only contributes RM19.5billion.

The oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) has its own almost parallel history in Malaysia. The plant itself originated from West Africa and was introduced into Malaya, by the British in early 1870’s, originally as an ornamental plant. The first commercial planting took place in Tennamaran Estate in Selangor in 1917. The aggressive expansion of palm oil cultivation actually begun in the early 1960s, a few years after the country was granted independence by the British. The government and the investing public decided to diversify the commodity base economy and reduce the dependence on rubber and tins. The 1960s also saw the introduction of land settlement schemes for planting oil palm, giving rise to the government owned land scheme operator, FELDA, now the biggest plantation company in the world. Today, 4.49 million hectares of land in Malaysia is under oil palm cultivation. The country produces 17.73 million tonnes of palm oil and 2.13 tonnes of palm kernel oil annually.

About 90 % of world production of oil palm comes from Malaysia and Indonesia. It is estimated that the size of oil palm plantations in Indonesia will grow to a whopping 56 million hectares by 2025, making it the biggest producer in the world. The biggest purchasers of palm oil are food and cosmetic giants like Cargill, Nestle and Unilever. These big players alone consumes up to 1.4 million tons of palm oil annually. Total world demand of oil palm around the world was around 54 million tonnes in 2011. The major importers are China, United States, and the European Union.  About 90 % of all palm oils are being processed into food (fats), cosmetics, detergents, and also candles. Today Malaysia boasts to be the host of the biggest plantation company in the world, Felda Global Ventures, valued at several billion dollars during its listing in the stock market in 2012.  

The rainforests are fragile ecosystems. Once a primary forest is being destroyed it can only be replaced after scores of years, if ever. The decimation process of the forest starts by exposing the soil to severe erosion. The cutting, up-rooting and removal of canopies expose the top soil to leaching and surface runoffs brought by the perennial heavy downpours of the tropical rain.  During the leaching process the nutrients are washed deeper into the soil, causing the top soil to become increasingly infertile over time. Soil erosion and soil leaching both occur in parallel resulting in gradual lose in soil fertility. Losing fertility means losing the ability to regenerate with the same vigour the forest previously enjoyed. Succession will soon begin, but this time around more invasive species will often dominate the space instead of restoring the original diversity previously attained.   

Two ecologists, Lee Dyer and Deborah Letourneau described a phenomenon called “diversity cascade” in the forest of Costa Rica. They observed that when a new predator was introduced to the shrubs of a Piper (pepper family) plant, which are the natural hosts of a diversity of invertebrates and thus can be considered as a microcosm of the larger rainforest ecosystem, these invertebrate communities quickly altered and deteriorated. The diversity cascade phenomenon clearly supports the hypothesis that rainforests are indeed fragile ecosystems, very vulnerable to even minor disturbances and perturbations.  (Source: Earthwatch Institute: Ecologists Test the Fragility of Rainforest Communities. www.earthwatch.org)     

Mini cascades are happening everywhere once parts of the forests are being disturbed. These mini cascades add up to bigger cascades which then turn into catastrophes – loss of forest canopy, soil erosion and loss of soil nutrient, loss of biodiversity, and finally the loss of the paradise we called the rainforest. It is true that the countries in Southeast Asia, especially Malaysia and Indonesia, are still actively developing their economic base to sustain the growing population and to bring most of them out of poverty. And forests are considered as the most valuable natural assets these countries may have. The rights to economic development using one’s own resources within one’s own national boundaries are rightly inalienable. However whether this continuous expansion of economic activities in the form of logging, planting of rubber and oil palm trees, and in many areas the opening up of large forest tracks to highways, hydro-electric dams, highland agriculture, and human habitations are sustainable in the long term? The Harvard's Pulitzer Prize-winning biologist Edward O. Wilson poignantly reminded us:

"The worst thing that can happen during the 1980s is not energy depletion, economic collapses, limited nuclear war, or conquest by a totalitarian government. As terrible as these catastrophes would be for us, they can be repaired within a few generations. The one process ongoing in the 1980s that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly that our descendants are least likely to forgive us for”.