Every minute, the area of 48 football fields of forest is destroyed. Deforestation is a pressing issue, threatening the well-being of our planet. The finite amount of forest on Earth is currently dwindling away due to human activity. If we the current trend in forest loss continues, in a hundred years there will be no rain forests left on earth. The main causes include illegal logging, fires, and most significantly, agriculture.
Though there are laws in place to protect forests and restrict logging companies, these laws are not always followed. The prevalence of illegal logging is shocking. In fact, the amount illegal logging exceeds legal logging in some places. A study in 2010 found that illegal logging accounted for “35-72% of logging in the Brazilian Amazon, 22-35% in Cameroon, 59-65% in Ghana, 40-61% in Indonesia and 14-25% in Malaysia.” Illegal logging is clearly detrimental to forests as it limitlessly clears trees to sell as timber. In addition to impacting the forests, illegal logging also hurts the economy of nearby communities which are often poor already. Outside forces who look to exploit the natural resources disregarding laws often also disregard the well-being and human rights of the individuals living nearby. Furthermore, law-abiding competitors end up at a disadvantage because they are limited in the amount of timber they can harvest and sell. Also, the flood of timber to the market due to illegal logging also decreases the value of the product, meaning the law-abiding companies lose money. In the end, the illegal loggers are the only group that is not directly harmed by their actions.
Deforestation due to logging. http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/10/29/lawless-loggers-threaten-indonesia-s-oldest-most-important-forests/
Fires are another significant threat to forests, especially as the climate changes. In the past, fires have not created so great an issue because they occurred a much smaller scale which actually benefitted some ecosystems. However, when fires grow uncontrollably, their effects can be devastating. Increasingly dry weather due to climate change presents ever-growing opportunities for wildfires to erupt. In 2010, the Amazon rainforest experienced the worst drought in history, leading to a million square kilometers of forest being impacted. Dry conditions are the spark that leads to massive fires that hurt forests.
Finally, the expanse of agriculture contributes the greatest blow to deforestation. The 2016 edition of State of World’s Forests shows that large-scale commercial agriculture was the cause of 73% of deforestation in tropical and subtropical countries. This figure doesn’t even account for small-scale agriculture. Humans are continually expanding the amount of land we use for to harvest food and goods. Demand for such goods grows along with the population, continually driving farmers and companies to expand their land at the expense of forests. Specifically, the causes of agriculture-related deforestation are shifting cultivation which accounts for 58%, encroachment, or land grabbing, which accounts for 50%, and livestock grazing which accounts for 33%. An important correlation to consider connects high rates of deforestation to low-income countries. Poor countries often rely heavily upon natural resources for their livelihood. Lack of government investment in agriculture in such countries continues to uncontrolled deforestation. These countries do not address deforestation as well as countries that promote investment in agriculture and offer infrastructure to secure farm land and forests.
Deforestation has widespread impacts. Two significant and highly interconnected effects are habitat loss and climate change. Loss of forest means loss of habitats for species that rely upon that environment. This leads to the death of many animals who need the forest to live. In extreme cases entire species of animals are endangered by deforestation-related habitat loss. The Siberian Tiger and the Sumatran Orangutan are just two of many examples. The looming extinction of a number of species threatens biodiversity. Weakened biodiversity is extremely detrimental on the scale of single species and of ecosystems as a whole. A species with less biodiversity is less likely to adapt to changes because all the individuals will have similar traits and therefore similar susceptibilities. A slight change in environment could then wipe out the entire species. An ecosystem with less biodiversity means it has less to offer to the organisms that live in and around it, including humans. Humans rely on plants and animals for food and medicine. Habitat loss could hypothetically lead to the extinction of a plant in the Amazon with the unrecognized ability to cure a human disease. If only for directly self-serving interests, humans should be more concerned about the threat of habitat loss in areas of such biodiversity of forests.
Deforestation also contributes to climate change. Forests act as “carbon sinks” which means they absorb CO2 emissions. Plants take in CO2 from the air for photosynthesis. This lowers the amount of CO2, a greenhouse gas, entering the atmosphere. Therefore, deforestation leads to increased CO2 emissions reaching the atmosphere. According to WWF, 15% of CO2 emissions are due to deforestation. This means that if the forests were left intact, 15% less CO2 would be accumulating in the atmosphere. Since greenhouse gases are a major contributor to global warming, deforestation is one of the many causes of manmade climate change.
To combat this issue, government stronger policies protecting forests are necessary. The governments of countries such as Brazil need to invest more in sustainable logging and agriculture to decrease the amount of forests cut down illegally. If stronger enforcement of these anti-deforestation policies is achieved, we will be able to stop the decline in forest size and consequently reduce animal extinctions and CO2 emissions.
Sources:
https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/deforestation
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/deforestation/
https://www.illegal-logging.info/topics/scale-illegal-logging
http://rainforests.mongabay.com/0809.htm
http://www.livescience.com/11382-10-species-kiss-goodbye.html
kvc5170 says
Deforestation is such a major issue right now. It has so many impacts, including loss of habitat for animals as well as contributing to climate change. I think a lot of people don’t think about issues like this because these are happening out of sight and can be forgotten about to some extent; however, it is so important that moving forward people start to really put an emphasis on this, because our environment is so important!
dmr5762 says
I knew deforestation was still a problem but reading the issues with the drastic numbers like that really puts it in a new perspective. It’s not talked about as much, but clearly it needs to be back in the news.