In China, and throughout this region, trees have been cut down in such drastic numbers that ecological balance has, in many places been thrown seriously out of kilter.
In the region and in other parts of the world catastrophic flooding, landslides, soil erosion and abnormal weather patterns are displacing millions of people from their homes.
Slash and burn techniques are poisoning the air. And, according to a recent Red Cross report, 10 million people are at risk of flooding annually. Land turned into desert will soon sap 40 per cent of the flows of the Indus, Niger and Nile, the report claimed.
We are frequently told that international trade has turned the world into a global village and that what takes place in one nation has a knock-on effect elsewhere. This phenomenon of cause and effect has always been true in nature. When vast forests are cut down in one hemisphere, the rainfall may be drastically reduced in the other. This region has been witness to the way the burning of Indonesia's forests in the past two years have resulted in Malaysia and Singapore being enveloped in a choking smog; catastrophic as the effect of the smog was, this is only one example of how environmental damage spreads beyond national and regional boundaries.
China's announcement of a plan to increase its tree cover by 10 per cent over the next 50 years is a belated and welcome attempt to remedy the devastation caused by deforestation.
Although the El Nino phenomenon has been blamed for many instances of abnormal weather around the globe, far greater damage is being done to the weather system by man.
