Hutan Hujan Tropika

Saya merasa agak terusik apabila melihat kemusnahan hutan tropika, lebih-lebih lagi kalau terserempak di depan mata. Bila saya rasa terusik, tak mestinya penebangan hutan tidak wajar dilakukan. Saya terserempak dengan hutan yang dimusnahkan untuk membina taman perumahan, mungkin keperluan untuk kependudukan, tetapi kenapa hutan yang semakin mengecil yang dimusnahkan? Ada hutan yang dimusnahkan begitu sahaja untuk sebatang dua kayu balaknya, selepas itu kelihatan terbiar. Tak tahulah pula kalau ada usaha-usaha penanaman semula. Untuk menyorokkan kemusnahan, biasanya selapis hutan dan belukar di dalam kelebaran beberapa meter (macam zon penampan) tidak diusik. Yang berlaku sebaliknya, Allah sahaja yang maha mengetahui.

Saya terjumpa suatu laman internet yang menyatakan 66 fakta berkaitan dengan hutan hujan tropika. Saya salin dan tampal di sini untuk rujukan sesiapa yang berminat. Sumber fakta adalah dari laman web berikut: http://www.pbs.org/tal/costa_rica/facts.html.

Fakta di bawah banyak menyentuh tentang Costa Rica dan Amerika Tengah kerana sumber laman webnya. Namun ada beberapa fakta yang bersifat umum yang baik untuk menjadi makluman kita.

66 Rainforest Facts

1. Costa Rica was the first Central American nation to cultivate coffee. By 1850, a large coffee plantation produced enough coffee for export to other nations around the world.

2. Costa Rica was the first Central American nation to cultivate bananas for export.

3. The first railroad was built between the Meseta Central and the coast and roads were built to connect San Jose and other major towns.

4. Deforestation accounts for the loss of nearly 2/3 of Central America's rain forests - almost 1 million acres/year.

5. More than 50% of the world's plant and animal species inhabit the 7% of the world that is covered in rainforest. Many of these species are located in small parts of the rainforest ecosystems and are found nowhere else on Earth.

6. The most species-rich plot of rainforest so far enumerated is in Peru: 283 species of trees 0.1 m in diameter, or over 580 stems on one hectare. Here, every second tree is a different species. While this is the most species-rich area, this kind of growth and biodiversity is typical for most rainforest ecosystems.

7. Since 1989, a global population of 5.2 million people is climbing by nearly 90 million/year. The population growth rate in Central America is 2.8%, the second highest in the world after Africa. Predictions show the region doubling in about 20 years.

8. In most tropical countries, two of the most obvious resources are its rainforests and the lands they occupy.

9. The developing countries, which account for most of the tropical rainforest biospheres, have almost 75% of the world's people but only about 15% of the world's goods.

10. The popular wood products made from trees found only in rainforests, such as mahogany or rosewood, have become a booming industry.

11. Most of the nutrients of a rainforest ecosystem are stored in its vegetation rather than in its soil.

12. One of the biggest industries throughout Central America is ranching. Most of the beef produced is exported to North America for consumption as hamburger in fast food restaurants.

13. The common way to clear land for agriculture or ranching is by felling and burning the trees, a practice known as slash-and-burn agriculture.

14. On September 9, 1987, a satellite picture of the Amazon River Basin showed a total of 7,603 fires burning in the rainforest.

15. The estimated rate of extinction of species of plants and animals in rainforest ecosystems resulting from human interference is 50,000 every year, an average of about 140/day.

16. Some 25% of all pharmaceuticals used by Americans originated in a tropical rainforest.

17. Species of plants and animals are disappearing from the rainforests before they can be cataloged and studied.

18. In most tropical countries only one tree is replanted for every 10 cut. In some countries the rate is one tree planted for 30 cut.

19. With the help of a private U.S. environmental organization, Conservation International, the Bolivian government established a forest-and-savanna reserve. In exchange, foreign banks forgave the Bolivian national debt totaling $650,000.

20. When populations outgrow their resources, their home has reached its carrying capacity. When a habitat or biosphere has reached its carrying capacity, its population must migrate to new areas or adjust to a lower standard of living.

21. About 2,000 trees per minute are cut down in the rainforests.

22. The forest root system has several important functions: a. It holds soil in place, preventing erosion. b. It absorbs rainfall and regulates water runoff. c. It replenishes groundwater supplies and regulates the flow of water in rivers and streams by storing and slowly releasing water throughout a year's time.

23. Experts tie extensive logging to flooding of massive land areas in Thailand in 1988.

24. Half the rainfall in Amazonia returns to the atmosphere through a process called evapotranspiration.

25. Hundreds of items that people in industrialized nations use every day come from tropical rainforests.

26. In the U.S., the Merck pharmaceutical company invested $1 million in a research project in Costa Rica, home of 11,000 plant species.

27. In non-industrialized nations of the tropics, wood is the primary energy source for millions of poor and landless rural people.

28. Indiscriminate logging of rainforests seriously, sometimes fatally, injures uncut trees and tears up or compacts the thin layer of top soil.

29. Most of the fertile land areas in Amazonia and the Philippines have been turned into huge plantations, many owned by multinational companies, to grow such export crops as bananas, pineapples, sugarcane and rice.

30. Almost 65% of Central America has been cleared to create pastureland for grazing cattle.

31. Rainforest land cleared for pasture or farming degrades quickly and must be abandoned.

32. In Costa Rica, 2,000 ranching families own more than 50% of the productive land.

33. Many indigenous cultures living in rainforests abandon their gardens and trek into the forest, setting up temporary shelters as far as 15 miles from the village, in order to hunt and collect forest foods.

34. Biologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich have likened the loss of individual species, from bacteria to mammals, to the continued loss of rivets that hold an airplane together. While the short-term effects may not be noticeable, the long-term effects could be disastrous.

35. The Ganges Plain, the most densely populated region in the world, has suffered the most severe flooding.

36. Most of the forests in India and Nepal have been cleared for agriculture.

37. Extensive use of powerful pesticides on banana plantations in Costa Rica has been tied to huge fish kills in nearby rivers and streams.

38. In 1990, Brazil's President Jose Sarney signed laws providing for extractive reserves to protect more than five million acres of forest areas to be managed by rubber tappers, nut gatherers and others whose livelihood depends on the rainforest harvest.

39. In Papua New Guinea, butterfly farms are a successful operation that provides income and supports forest preservation.

40. Deforestation is producing rainforest fragments or relict patches or has simplified rainforest ecosystems in structure and composition by exploiting them for timber.

41. Forest fragments, if isolated, degenerate by loss of animal pollinators, dispersers and predators. The species balance is upset. The ecosystem begins to collapse.

42. As European nations took an interest in the products of rainforests the demand for these products outstripped the ecosystem's ability to produce.

43. About 75% of Costa Rica's people live in the fertile plain of the nation's highlands, called the Meseta Central.

44. Costa Rica's Meseta Central has rich volcanic soil and a favorable climate, making it perfectly suitable for cultivating coffee.

45. The Meseta Central of Costa Rica is the home of some of the area's richest tropical rainforests.

46. At least 42 million acres of tropical forest are lost each year, an area the size of Washington State. This equals about 100 acres/minute.

47. Since the turn of the century, 90 tribes of indigenous peoples have been wiped out in Brazil alone. The pace of annihilation is increasing; 26 of those tribes were killed or scattered in the past decade.

48. Each year, Latin American and Caribbean nations transfer $20-$30 billion to the industrialized world. Meanwhile, 44% of the labor force of this same region is unemployed. At least 70% of Central Americans live in poverty.

49. Sixty percent of the region's 20 million people rely on firewood for cooking, placing additional pressure on the remaining forests.

50. Costa Rica's climate is mild in the central highlands, tropical and subtropical in coastal areas.

51. Costa Rica's workforce is distributed among the following industries: a. Agriculture: 24% b. Community and personal services: 22% c. Industry: 19% d. Commerce: 22% e. Construction: 5% d. Transportation and warehouse: 4% e. Banking and finance: 4%

52. The industry breakdown is as followed: a. Industry: food processing, textiles and clothing, construction materials, fertilizer, petroleum refining b. Agriculture: bananas, coffee, beef, sugarcane, rice, vegetables, ornamental plants and fruits c. Commerce and tourism: hotels, restaurants, stores, tourist services d. Major exports: ($2.1 billion) bananas, coffee, beef, textiles and clothing, sugar, fruits, flowers and ornamental plants e. Major Imports: ($2.9 billion) manufactured goods, machinery, transportation equipment, chemicals, fuel, foodstuffs, fertilizer

53. Non-traditional exports and tourism in Costa Rica have increased rapidly and now account for more than 50% of foreign currency earnings.

54. The population of Costa Rica is divided ethnically in the following manner: a. European with some mestizo: 94% b. African origin: 3% c. Indigenous: 2%

55. The Costa Rican government has placed about 25% of the national territory under park and preserve title with 74 units under Forestry service management.

56. The Costa Rican government has introduced laws and benefits to companies with the capital and knowledge to reforest the degrading lands of Costa Rica. Laws governing reforestation give major tax breaks to these companies and create incentives to individual investors to travel to and retire in Costa Rica.

57. Costa Rica has a network of good paved roads, although most of the secondary roads are in poor shape making it necessary to have a four wheel drive vehicle when traveling to remote areas.

58. Costa Rica loses 2.5 tons of topsoil to erosion for every kilo of meat exported; a farmer can make 86 times as much money per acre with coffee and 284 times as much with bananas as with beef.

59. Most of Costa Rica's protected areas are surrounded by developed areas that "squeeze" the forests and cut off migratory routes or needed territory from the forest species.

60. Two of the remaining indigenous tribes of Costa Rica, the Bribri' and Ca'becar Indians who inhabit remote regions close to the Panamanian border, are finding their tenuous traditional livelihoods threatened.

61. Costa Rica is now home to a profusion of conservation groups and projects, ranging from private nature reserves and children's reforestation projects to a $22.5 million forest-management project for the Central Volcanic Mountain Range funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

62. Costa Rica is making a concerted effort to integrate the livelihoods of local communities into the philosophy and day-to-day operation of the national park system.

63. Some of the diseases or medical problems cured, solved or eased with plants discovered in rainforests include: a. malaria (the bark of the cinchona tree produces quinine) b. a muscle relaxant during surgery (curare, a vine extract used by indigenous peoples to poison arrows and darts) c. strokes, seizure, depression and Alzheimer's disease (secretions of an Amazonian frog called Phyllomedusa bicolor)

64. Costa Rica has begun to develop a visitor-management program to enable its park systems to control the adverse effects of eco-tourism on the parks.

65. In 1982, Costa Rica signed an agreement with Panama to join two adjacent protected areas, one in each nation, to form the first transfrontier park known as the La Amistad Biosphere Reserve. This park is one of the richest ecological biospheres in Central America.

66. Owing to the nature of its soil composition and topography, more than half the land in Costa Rica is judged unsuitable for growing permanent crops or for anything other than trees.

Di samping itu saya ada sedikit makluman yang telah lama saya terjemahkan secara bebas di mana setiap nilai asal US$1.00, saya kira sebagai RM3.80. Saya tak dapat memberikan sumber dan rujukannya. Jadi, cukuplah untuk sekadar maklumat anda. Anda tentu lebih bijak untuk mencari sumber yang lebih sahih.

Fakta Tentang Hutan dan Pokok

Sambil kita melupuskan pokok-pokok di sekitar rumah kita atau di dalam kebun kita, mahupun menggondolkan hutan simpan kekal di dalam negeri kita, samada secara sengaja mahupun secara terpaksa, cuba-cubalah kita renungkan beberapa fakta berkenaan pokok yang dapat dikumpulkan di sini:

q Sebatang pokok hutan berumur 50 tahun nilai sebenarnya adalah RM486,625. Ia menghasilkan oksigen bernilai RM80,625 dan melakukan kerja-kerja pengawalan pencemaran udara bernilai RM155,000. Ia melakukan kerja-kerja pengawalan hakisan tanah bernilai RM78,125 dan kerja-kerja mengitar semula air bernilai RM93,750.. Ia merupakan singgahsana mergastua bernilai RM79,125.

q Malaysia berusaha menambah kawasan hijau sedia ada dengan program penanaman pokok dengan sasaran20 juta menjelang 2020. Ini adalah untuk mengekalkan 50 peratus keluasan negara sebagai kawasan hutan atau kawasan hijau mengikut Agenda 21 Persidangan Kemuncak Dunia di Rio de Janeiro yang dipersetujuinya. Menjelang 2005, Malaysia mensasarkan wawasan mencapai status Negara Dalam Taman.

q Malaysia, sehingga kini mempunyai sekitar 71% daripada jumlah tanahnya yang berpokok, yang terdiri dari hutan semulajadi (58%) dan ladang (13%) yang menunjukkan bahawa ianya adalah antara negara terhijau di dunia.

q Sumber kepelbagaian biologi hutan Malaysia merangkumi 185,000 spesies fauna dan 12,500 flora. menyebabkan ia diiktiraf antara 12 kawasan mega yang kaya dengan kepelbagaian biologi di dunia.

Satu fungsi pokok yang penting di bandar ialah meredakan keadaan panas keterlaluan. Kajian menunjukkan bahawa kawasan yang ditanami beberapa batang pokok, khususnya di taman kecil di Kuala Lumpur, mempunyai suhu persekitaran antara dua hingga lima darjah lebih rendah berbanding kawasan tidak berpokok.

q Sempena Hari Habitat Sedunia 2000 Oktober tahun lalu, Perdana Menteri Malaysia telah mengetuai rakyat Malaysia menjayakan usaha menanam 100,000 Pokok Alaf Baru 2000 di Taman Bukit Jalil, Kuala Lumpur. Dalam tempoh seminit 100,000 pokok daripada 30 spesies ditanam serentak di seluruh Malaysia sempena Hari Habitat Sedunia 2000 itu. Kejayaan itu mengatasi rekod Guiness Book of Records yang dicipta di Brazil iaitu menanam 24,199 pokok dalam tempoh seminggu di Sao Paulo pada April 1996.

q Serumpun pokok dapat menurunkan suhu di kawasan sekitarnya sehingga 10 darjah selsius.

q Sejumlah 500,000 pokok boleh menyerap 6,500 tan metrik habuk atau satu tan metrik habuk bagi setiap 77 pokok..

q Satu hektar kawasan yang ditanam dengan pokok boleh menyerap 900 kilogram karbon dioksida dan mengeluarkan 600 kilogram oksigen. Kawasan seluas 40 meter persegi yang ditanam dengan pokok rendang dapat mengeluarkan cukup oksigen untuk pernafasan seseorang.

q Meskipun tumbuh-tumbuhan bersama para haiwan membentuk komponen kehidupan (faktor biotik) bagi ekosistem, hampir kesemua biojisim ekosistem itu tersimpan di dalam tumbuh-tumbuhan, kebanyakannya pokok. Biojisim seberat 650 ton sehektar dapat disukat di dalam hutan-hutan tanah pamah di Malaysia, di mana biojisim para haiwan hanya menyumbang sebanyak satu persepuluh peratus.

q Hutan hujan tropika mempunyai purata biojisim 300 ton sehektar berbanding separuh daripadanya untuk hutan hawa sederhana. Keamatan biojisim sememangnya berbeza. Hutan hujan tropika biasanya mengumpulkan lebih kalsium, silika, sulfur, ferrum, magnesium dan natrium, dan kurang kalium dan fosforus berbanding hutan hawa sederhana.

q Hutan hujan tropika menyediakan ruang untuk berbagai bentuk kehidupan. Kebanyakan spesis di bumi tinggal di dalam hutan ini. Sering tidak disedari, kolam takungan kehidupan ini menjadi titik mula bagi 25% daripada bahan-bahan perubatan yang baru.

q Hutan hujan tropika memainkan peranan penting di dalam mengekalkan kimia atmosfera. Jumlah bahan tumbuh-tumbuhan yang banyak adalah disekitar 50% karbon (yang datangnya daripada karbon dioksida atmosfera melalui fotosintesis) mengikut berat.

q Fotosintesis di kalangan tumbuh-tumbuhan darat yang meliputi hutan hujan tropika menyingkirkan lebihkurang 110x10⁹ ton karbon daripada atmosfera setiap tahun.. Kadar pemerosesan karbon dari atmosfera oleh hutan tropika adalah sepanjang 0.8 tahun.

q Wap air dari troposfera di atas Lembah Tengah Amazon dibekalkan oleh 50% daripada sejatan lautan dan 50% daripada sejatperpeluhan hutan. 50% hujan yang menimpa lembangan itu dikembalikan ke atmosfera oleh hutannya, yang sekali gus menjadi saliran hujan untuk kawasan yang lebih jauh di barat. Saliran ini akan terputus jika hutan-hutan seumpamanya dimusnahkan.

q Lantai hutan dara boleh menyerap air sebanyak 200% daripada beratnya keringnya. Air yang terserap melalui lantai hutan inilah yang menjadi pembekal utama air sungai di dalam musim kemarau. Keseimbangan air di dalam hutan tropika membantu tanah gembur daripada kesan buruk ribut tropika apabila hujan yang sampai kepermukaan tanah dikurangkan oleh sejatperpeluhan hutan.

q Data yang paling menyeluruh daripada Pertubuhan Makanan dan Pertanian (FAO) menyebutkan bahawa kadar tahunan kemusnahan hutan untuk tahun 1981-1985 adalah 11.4 juta hektar (114,000 kilometer persegi atau 44,000 batu persegi). Kadar tahunan ini bersamaan dengan 0.6% kawasan hutan tropika yang ada pada tahun 1980.

q Sehingga 1996, jumlah penggunaan kayu tropika ialah 1.7 juta meter padu setahun dengan kadar penebangan hutan sedunia sebanyak 24.9 juta hektar setahun.

Hanya Allah yang maha mengetahui.

Daun-daun musim luruh

CARREER DEVELOPMENT AND MANAGEMENT

Di gali dari rujukan berikut. Semoga dapat dimenafaatkan oleh mereka yang berhasrat untuk membina kerjayanya:

Lewis, P.S., Goodman, S.H., and Fandt, P.M.; “Management - Challenges In The 21st Century”; West Publishing Company; 1995.

Defination of Career development and Management

The individually perceived sequence of attitudes and behavoiur associated with work-related experiences, activities, and position over the span of person’s life. Involve movement within the organisation ( such as moving up the organisational ladder) and between the organisations, as well as the attitudes and behaviours that are associated with the ongoing work-related activities and experiences.

Career Stage

Career development and management could be viewed as series of stages:

Exploring and testing

Usulally corresponds to the eraly years of an individual career. The individual explores talents, interests, and values; try to find or match between career and self-image; make an initial choice of the occupation, and attempt to become establish. Socialisation transforms the newcomer into effective member of the organisation. In this stage, individuals are expcted to follow directions and play roles as helper or leaner. Supervisors provide coaching relationship, feedback, guidance and opportunities.

Establishment and Advancement

Individual establishes career goals and strive to acheieve them, heavily oriented towards building a record of significant accomplishement that relate success. Supervisors provide challenging task and provide feedback about performance. Individuals likely to involve in special assignments, transfer and promotions, becoming more visible in higher management, oftem become more specialised, develope area expertise, acquire professional standing and take over organisational responsibilities.

Maintenance

Movement into this stage often associated with professional accomplishments, progress up the organisational hierachy, high involvement in the job, and the responsibility for training and directing others.

Withdrawal

Main stage in this stage involve remaining a productive contributor with strong sense of self-worth, developing and training possible successor and completing major long term projects and assignments. Individuals in this stage must develope self-image, be provided with lot of freedom and autonomy.

Career Success

Individuals should establish their own career criteria for success and those criteria can be as diverse as pay, adventure, challenges or helping others. 4 alternatives career concepts that serve as the models for the ideal career have been identified.

1. Linear career

An individual decides on a field early in life, develop a plan for upward mobility and executes it. The linear career is often linked to a need for achievement and power.

2. Steady-state career

An individual selects a specific field of work and may continue to improve professionally and financially within that field. The seady-state career -driven person does not necessatily strive to move up the corporate hierachy, but may remain at the same level of the organisation indefinitely. The carrer concept is motivated by the need for security and the desire to maintain role in the society.

3. Spiral career

The individual views a career as a series of infrequent but major shift into different field of work. Within each occupation the person work hard and excels in status and rank before moving on to new opportunities and challenges. Individuals are motivated by the need for personal growth.

4. Transitory career.

The individuals explore alternatives while seeking to fing carrier identity. . Transitory career individuals are often troubleshooters who are driven by novelty and challenge of problemsolving. These individulas are motivated by the need for independence and identity and often drift one occupation to another with no particular pattern.

Strategies For Career Management

Career management is the longlife process of learning obout oneself and about various jobs in the organisation. It involves setting the personal goals, developing strategies for achieving goals, and revising goals based on the work life experience.

Individuals can engage in career development and management on their own or in conjuction with career development progrmmes sponsored by the organisation. In the size reduction of middle management, restructuring and rightsizing within the organisation, many individuals were thrown offtrack and landed on the career plateau (i.e.. the point where the likelyhood of future promotion is very low), which could possibly be overcome by:

• using career counselling
• developing a strong network of other professionals
• becoming adaptable and less speicalised
• learning to be a team player

Develop a strong professional network

Networking is the determined effort to meet other professionals with the goal of building resource of professional experience, knowledge and friendship. It is the 2-way relationship focussed on exchage ideas, new informations and new contacts.

Hints for building network:

• join international organisations of related field
• exhange business card
• introduce yourself and show interest
• ask question and be effective listener
• develop strong relationship within the organisation
• keep note on the poeple met

Become adaptable and less specialise

Infuture, workers would be rewarded for knowldge and adaprability, indication on less emphasis on carrer specialisation and more on generalisation. A key carrer anagement strategy is to be flexible and willing to move from one funtion to another by integrating various disciline and perspectives.

Learn to be team player

Team design requires managers to share more ower with people they once regarded as subordinates, and employees of lower rank experience more responsibilities. People skill become extremely imporatant and even leaders should leran how to follow.

Tactics For Career Succees

5 tactics have been identified as improtant for career success

• Do excellent work. Political savvy could give the average performer but politicsmay backfire. As a rule, the better the work the greater the chance of being promoted and given greater authority and responsibilities
• Increase your visibility.

Stratgies for being visible:

• Send memos to superior when projects have been completed.
• Submit periodic progress report.
• Actively solicit and use feedback.
• Get assigned to a high-impact special projects and task forces.
• Pay honest compliments to people.
• Volunteer for a variety of assignments.
• Be mobile. Be flxilbe and prepared to move. Experience different management fuction to develop various skills neded. Take new tasks with variety of people. Experience at various geograhical locations.
• Find a mentor, better several mentors. Higher level manager could be powerful mentors and learn from them.
• Avoid deadwood. Incompetence supervisor seldom appreciate the subordinate abilities and their recommendations will not seriously be taken, and they themselves has been bypassed. If asking for transfer from deadwoods is considered disloyalty, ensure the superior from other department knows of your work and availability and let that manager arrange the transfer.