Green Algae Strategy Products - Forrests

Reforestation Over half of the natural forests on earth have been destroyed, largely for construction or producing or cooking food. Without the root systems to hold the soil and the canopy to provide nutrients, deforested areas degrade quickly with severe erosion and dramatically reduced biodiversity. Deforestation destroys the habitat for animals, birds and fish and often results in the expansion of deserts. Lack of forests, especially dense tropical forests, result in net increases to carbon dioxide exacerbating global warming.

The three primary causes of deforestation include clearing forest lands to:

1.	Grow food – soybeans, wheat and maize in the Americas, Asia, Africa and India

2.	Grow biofuel feedstocks – sugarcane and palm oil in South America, Indonesia and Asia

3.	Cook food – all continents

Farmers often find that after expending considerable energy clearing forest land, the soil is not as productive as traditional cropland and it often becomes nonproductive absent heavy fertilizer application after a few growing seasons. If farmers had an alternative way to grow food that did not require clearing forest lands, many would embrace the alternative.

Farming biofuel feedstocks such as sugarcane and palm oil similarly come at the cost of severe deforestation. The collateral damage from deforestation, soil erosion, water pollution and dead zones will motivate biofuel feedstock farmers to other feedstocks, especially if the alternatives are more productive.

Three needed solutions

A green algae strategy for solving deforestation and the elimination of smoke death requires three actions: 1.	 Design and development of small CAPS that can sustain production with primarily local tools and labor for food and cooking oil production

2.	  Bioengineering of algae with cell walls that make lipid and protein extraction easy and cell walls that are digestible to humans

3.	  The development of simple algae processing techniques such as a press to extract the oil and separate the usable protein and possibly carbohydrates

Updated information and discussion groups on each topic are available at the algae collaboratory, www.greenas.org.

Reforestation and black smoke death solutions may not occur as quickly as water and biofuel innovations because there is less commercial value in creating small local algae production. However, the psychological value is priceless – saving mothers and children and saving forests. The economic value of large-scale production for biofuels may provide the necessary biotechnology breakthroughs that will allow for the recovery of forests and for millions to avoid smoke death or disability.