Previous Lesson about Advocacy
What Is Deforestation?
Deforestation refers to the decrease in forest areas across the world that are lost for other uses such as agricultural croplands, urbanization, or mining activities. Greatly accelerated by human activities since 1960, deforestation has been negatively affecting natural ecosystems, biodiversity, and the climate. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimates the annual rate of deforestation to be around 1.3 million km2 per decade.
The Causes of Deforestation: Why Is Deforestation Happening?
Multiple factors, either of human or natural origin, cause deforestation. Natural factors include natural forest fires or parasite-caused diseases which can result in deforestation. Nevertheless, human activities are among the main causes of global deforestation. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the expansion of agriculture caused nearly 80% of global deforestation, with the construction of infrastructures such as roads or dams, together with mining activities and urbanization, making up the remaining causes of deforestation.
1. Deforestation Caused By New Constructions (~15%)
The construction of human infrastructures has also been driving deforestation. More specifically, 10% of deforestation can be attributed to new infrastructures that serve the current human lifestyle in four main ways: transportation, transformation, and energy generation.
Deforestation Effects – How Does Deforestation Affect The Environment?
1. The Effects of Deforestation on Local People and Their Livelihoods
Healthy forests support the livelihoods of 1.6 billion people globally, one billion of whom are among the world’s poorest. This means there are many people depending on forests for survival and using them to hunt and gather raw products for their small-scale agriculture processes. But in developing countries such as Borneo, Indonesia, Vietnam, Brazil, or Mexico, land tenure systems are weak. This allows big businesses to get these lands and use them for other ends, disrupting local people’s lives.
How Can We Stop Deforestation? Solutions to Deforestation
How can we stop deforestation? According to OECD, the human population is expected to continue to increase and reach over 9 billion people by 2050. At the current rate of consumption, and with more people inhabiting Earth, the need for more space to grow food and extract natural resources is only likely to increase – depending, of course, on tech development such as artificial foods. As the demand for food or raw materials like cotton or minerals increases, so does the need to turn forests into farmland, pastureland, or mining spots.
What Are People Doing to Stop Deforestation?
What is being currently done to stop deforestation? Efforts to replant deforested areas are taking place every day. Unfortunately, some replanting is done with the goal of quickly growing trees to be exploited in the short term by the logging industry. These often consist of monotypic plantations (less resilient, more appealing to harmful environmental management practices) such as eucalyptus or pines.
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