Story beneath...Barcoding Trees

Last week Reuters reported about a British company that is barcoding trees to protect the forest:

"Deep in the world's tropical rainforests, workers are hammering thousands of barcodes into hardwood trees to help in the fight against illegal logging, corruption and global warming.

The plastic tags, like those on supermarket groceries, have been nailed to a million trees across Africa, southeast Asia and South America to help countries keep track of timber reserves.

Helveta, the British company behind the technology, says the barcodes will help firms comply with tough laws on importing sustainable timber into the United States and Europe.

They could also play a role in fighting deforestation, which accounts for about a fifth of global emissions of planet-warming carbon dioxide. ...

"We bring transparency and visibility where historically that has probably been limited at best," Patrick Newton, Helveta's chief executive officer, told Reuters."

Sounds like a good solution? I am not so sure. To me that sounds like a reflex reaction to treat symptoms of a deeper pathology with the cures that we tare most familiar with: controlling, measuring, administrating. Nature is seen as something we can put a tag on, simply a resource. And that would be one of the memes that is being spread with this type of solution: Nature is a resource that we can only protect if we bring it into our warehousing system.

Maybe barcoding is a better-than-nothing solution for the time being, but generally speaking, it only enforces alienation from nature. Which is the real reason for thoughtless pollution or irresponsible exploitation of the ecosystem

Related post: Learning for Life