An Era in which the Voices of the Forests Have Disappeared: Tropical Forests Speak to the Memory of the Earth (1994)

An Era in which the Voices of the Forests Have Disappeared: Tropical Forests Speak to the Memory of the Earth (1994)
Around 1994, the world was in a state of quiet emergency as tropical forests were disappearing at an unprecedented rate. Tropical forests are the source of life for nearly half of all living species on the planet, yet they exist only in a small portion of the earth's surface. The fact that these precious forests are being lost at a rate of 20 million hectares per year, and that half of them have disappeared in the decades since the 1960s, has caused a deep sense of crisis among environmental researchers and international organizations around the world. There was a growing awareness that the collapse of ecosystems was not a distant phenomenon, but that the very activities of human society were shaking the very foundations of the earth.

At this time, Japan was attracting international attention as the world's largest importer of tropical timber. Large volumes of timber were imported from Asia and South America to support domestic demand for plywood, and trading companies and plywood companies were influencing the supply-demand structure of logging areas. In Sarawak, the Punan and other indigenous peoples blocked logging roads and protested the rapid loss of forests, which spread through the world press and came to be perceived as a symbol of global environmental problems. The effects of logging were not only the destruction of ecosystems, but also the disruption of traditional livelihoods, the muddying of rivers, and the reduction of food resources, all of which fundamentally shook the livelihoods of the people.

In the field of international development, development assistance and loans from financial institutions were also criticized as contributing to deforestation. in the early 1990s, Japan's official development assistance focused on large-scale infrastructure development, and much of it was tied to logging roads and the creation of land for development, without sufficient consideration of the impact on the ecosystem. World Bank and Asian Development Bank loans were also viewed as problematic because of their environmental impact, and it became clear that the structure threatened local communities that depended on forests.

Against this backdrop, Japanese environmental NGOs such as JATAN (Tropical Forest Action Network) emerged, and citizens began to conduct concrete research and make proposals to corporations and the government. They conveyed the voices of indigenous peoples, launched international campaigns calling for a halt to logging, and questioned the consumption structure and policies of Japanese society through signature campaigns and open questionnaires. The increased environmental awareness that followed the Rio Earth Summit also provided a tailwind, and the activities of a small group became internationally influential.

In this way, the issue of tropical forest destruction was not just a story of nature conservation, but a microcosm of the times itself, a complex interplay of biodiversity loss, indigenous rights, international economic distortions, national development policies, and the growth of citizen movements. The phenomenon of disappearing forests was both a reflection of the earth's pain and a silent warning of how humans have built civilizations and cast their shadows on the ecosystems of other countries. The silence of the forest continues to carry a heavy resonance containing questions about the future that we must face.