Deforestation and Subsequent Side Effects
Deforestation
Deforestation is the process by which forests are cleared by logging or burning, either for use as timber or to replace the area for alternative uses.
Forests cover about 30% of the world’s land area, but each year swaths the size of the country of Panama are lost, which is the equivalent of 36 football fields a minute. At the current rate of deforestation, the world’s rain forests could completely vanish in a hundred years.
How can we help slow down deforestation and stop the side effects? Well, the fastest way would be to just stop chopping down trees. However, we can’t just abruptly stop using wood and paper products, so this method is extremely unlikely. What we can do is manage our resources carefully while eliminating clear-cutting to make sure that forest environments remain intact. The trees that do get cut down should be balanced by planting enough young trees to replace the trees cut down in any given forest. While the number of new tree plantations is growing every year, it still remains a tiny percentage of Earth’s forests.
Together we can help remedy what we have done to our environment. After all, the Earth is everything we have, and we can’t afford to lose it.
Right?
Causes of Deforestation
So why are trees cut down? There are a lot of reasons for deforestation, but by far the biggest reason is agriculture. An increased demand for agricultural commodities provides incentives to turn forests into farm fields and pastures. Trees are cut and burned in a process known as slash and burn agriculture to get more room for planting crops or grazing livestock. This leads to severe deforestation.
Another reason for deforestation is logging, both legal and illegal. Logging operations cut countless trees each year. They also build roads to access more and more remote forests, which means that more and more trees are cut down. Illegal loggers violate national and international laws that regulate the production and trade of timber products at all stages, including harvesting, processing, and sales. The regulations can be violated in many ways, such as taking wood from protected areas, harvesting more than is permitted, and harvesting protected species. Illegal logging happens internationally, and in some parts of the world, illegal logging is more common than legal logging.
Fires are another cause of deforestation. Each year, millions of acres of forest around the world are destroyed due to fires, intentional or wild. Fire is often used to clear land for use such as planting crops. These fires can open up forests to invasive species, threaten biodiversity, and alter water cycles, soil fertility, and the structure and composition of forests. In addition, forest fires can destroy the livelihoods of the people who live in and around the forests. Wood is still a common fuel choice for cooking and heating in many parts of the world. About half of the illegal removal of timber from forests is thought to be for use as fuelwood.
Effects of Deforestation
Effects of deforestation include increased greenhouse gas emissions, disruption of the water cycle, increased soil erosion, habitat loss, species loss, and disrupted livelihoods. Forests act as a carbon sink. They soak up carbon dioxide that would otherwise be free in the atmosphere and contribute to global warming. However, when trees are cut down and burned for fuel, the carbon is released to the atmosphere. Tropical forests hold more than 210 gigatons of carbon, and it is estimated that 15% of all greenhouse emissions are the result of deforestation.
Trees help to keep a balance between water on the land and water in the atmosphere. But when trees are cut down at such high rates, the balance can be thrown off, resulting in disruption of the water cycle and changes in precipitation and river flow.
Without tree roots to anchor soil, the soil can erode and sweep into rivers. The agricultural plants that replace the trees, like coffee, cotton, palm oil, soybean, and wheat, can actually make the soil erosion worse because their roots are too weak to hold onto the soil. About a third of the world’s arable land has been lost through soil erosion since 1960.
Deforestation affects people as well. In Southeast Asia’s Greater Mekong, deforestation has caused social conflict and migration. In Brazil, poor people have been lured from their villages to faraway soy plantations where they are forced under gunpoint to work under inhumane conditions.
Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
When cattle ranchers clear rain forests to raise beef to sell to fast-food chains that make hamburgers to sell to Americans who have the highest rate of heart disease in the world, we can say easily that business is no longer developing the world, we have become its predator.
- Paul Hawken
