Jannali Allwood-Hughes

Can you imagine suffering from headaches, high fevers, vomiting, muscle and joint pains all at the same time? This is dengue fever! A disease carried by mosquitoes, this is a product of deforestation, in places like Africa and Asian countries,  it is a fact that disease is spreading from Animals and insects! In the past fatal diseases spread such as Black Death, also known as bubonic plague, had over seventy five million fatalities, the Spanish flu, also known as influenza pandemic, spread in 1918 had estimated seventeen to 100 million deaths, Studies show that HIV may have jumped from chimpanzees to humans as far back as the late 1800s. The chimpanzee version of the virus is called ‘simian immunodeficiency virus’, It was probably passed to humans when humans hunted these chimpanzees for meat and came in contact with their infected blood.

In 1976 the Ebola virus was discovered in congo, it was introduced by fruit bats, it is evident that the virus existed before the outbreaks started but quickly spread as interaction with wildlife increased, in 2014 it was deemed a global epidemic within months since it reached southeastern Guinea, spread to urban areas and across borders, And more recently SARS (Covid) which also came from bats in Wuhan, Hubei, China, in November 2019.

The loss of trees and other vegetation can cause climate change, desertification, soil erosion and fewer crops, trees play a big role in the local water cycle by helping not keep balance between the water in the atmosphere, deforestation leads to continuous floods and dry season, when there are trees the soil has high retention capacity and it prevents the danger of floods in heavy rainfall seasons however ther is nothing to check during heavy rainfall seasons in the absence of trees, in Haiti light rains triggered floods that killed more then three thousand people, when you remove vegetation the top soil washes away, the earth is incapable of absorbing rainfall.

When forests are cut down much of that stored carbon is released into the atmosphere again as CO2, this is how deforestation and forest degradation contribute to global warming.

Global loss of tropical forests contributed about 4.8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, the Amazon rainforest is often referred to as the lungs of the earth because its draws in carbon dioxide and breathes out oxygen, climate change won’t just impact forests and coral reefs, it will also affect all of us, it’s extreme weather to increasing food prices to decreased opportunities to appreciate the natural world.

“Forests are in fact the world’s air-conditioning system, the very lungs of the planet and help to store the largest body of freshwater on the planet essential to produce food for our planet’s growing population.”

Deforestation is spreading diseases, eroding the soil and producing more weather issues which leads to floods, we must find solutions because the damage is unfixable, we must stand with indigenous people, 

Forests around the world have been home to Indigenous Peoples for tens of thousands of years. Evidence shows that when Indigenous Peoples’ rights to traditional lands and self-determination are respected, forests stay standing. But too often, corporations and governments overlook or intentionally trample the rights of Indigenous Peoples.

We need to promote sustainable choices, consuming less, eating sustainable foods, and choosing recycled or responsibly-produced wood products. We can all be part of the movement to protect forests.