Introduction
This report is about how large-scale deforestation should be stopped.
What is deforestation?
Deforestation is the clearing of trees. Deforestation is done to clear land for agriculture and to gather wood for fuel, construction and manufacturing. Deforestation has been happening for quite some time; it peaked in 1980 since then it has slowed. Deforestation has changed the landscape of many countries. 2000 years ago, eighty percent of western Europe was forested, nowadays the figure is 34 per cent. In North America, approximately 50% of the forests withinside the eastern part of the continent were cleared from the 1600s to the 1870s for wood and agriculture. China has lost a number of its forests over the last 4,000 years and now only 20 percent of China is forested. In this report I will show the effects of deforestation on the environment and the consequences of deforestation for humans and animals. I will then propose some solutions and a conclusion.
Causes
When we think of deforestation we probably think it happens just for construction or paper, but in fact one of the biggest contributors to deforestation is agriculture. When we think about farming and agriculture we often don’t think about the fact that much of Earth’s farmland was once forests. 80% of deforestation is a result of cattle ranching.
A second cause of deforestation is road expansion.
Clearing trees for roads doesn’t cause much deforestation itself but the roads allow access to inaccessible and often unclaimed land. Road expansion often leads to logging. Once the area has been harvested by the loggers it becomes a magnet for farmers and ranchers who remove any remaining forest for cropland or pasture. Which all started just from the road being built. In other cases, the logging degraded forests become fire-prone and are eventually deforested by accidental fires.
Out of the 17 billion cubic feet(481386392.064 cubic metres) of trees deforested each year, over 60% are used to make paper. How do we use so much paper? The manufacturing of containerboard is the biggest use of paper. Containerboard is used to make Corrugated fiberboard which is used to make cardboard boxes. Shipping and deliveries creates the biggest demand for paper.
Consequences
What are the consequences of deforestation?
Deforestation damages and or destroys ecosystems that are valuable to wildlife and humans alike.
The Amazon rainforest is already a hot environment. When deforestation happens it allows more sunlight to reach the forest floor. This causes the soil to dry out and the lower levels of the forest to become hotter. Also, trees are products of carbon- a greenhouse gas. Wood or forest fires give off the carbon that is stored inside of the trees into the atmosphere, this happens in the form of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide along with a few other gases causes an effect called the greenhouse effect which traps heat in the atmosphere. This is what causes global warming. On earth, it is estimated that around 30% of all carbon emissions come from burning timber.
Deforestation causes an increase in greenhouse gases due to fewer trees on earth absorbing CO2 in the atmosphere. One of the most significant consequences of deforestation is habitat loss. 70% of all species live in tropical rainforests. The canopy in the rainforests not only provides a home for animals such as monkeys or birds, but it also acts as a shelter that regulates the rainforest's temperature. Deforestation will cause the rainforests to be more like a desert without the canopy in the trees to regulate the temperature, there would be very hot days and very cold nights.
The water cycle is partially regulated by trees which help keep the level of water in the atmosphere under control.
Where deforestation has occurred, there are lower amounts of water in the air to be returned to the ground. This leads to the soil drying out which makes it so crops are unable to grow. Some other effects deforestation has are soil erosion and coastal flooding. Trees help the land retain water and topsoil, which provides the rich nutrients to sustain additional forest life.
Without forests, the soil erodes and fades away, forcing farmers to move on and perpetuate the cycle. The dry land left behind as a result of these unsustainable agricultural practices is more prone to flooding, especially in coastal regions.
Complex ecosystems become disrupted when forests are destroyed. The destruction of forests also causes human communities to suffer the consequences of widespread deforestation. Firewood, timber and charcoal from trees are relied on by people in countries like Uganda. Uganda lost over 3,500 square miles of its forests from the years 2000-2020 reported by global forest watch. In Uganda, families send children, mainly girls, to collect firewood. Due to deforestation, these children have to travel farther and farther to find trees. The children can’t go to school because it often takes all day to collect enough wood.
Three-quarters of the freshwater of the world comes from forested watersheds, and the lack of forests can create worse water quality. The report additionally determined that over 1/2 of the worldwide population relies on forested watersheds for drinking water in addition to the water used for agriculture and industry.
Possible Solutions
Let’s look at some possible solutions. These are the solutions I came up with.
Reducing paper use.
Finding alternatives to beef.
Repurposing land.
Reducing Paper
Although paper isn’t one of the biggest causes of deforestation.
It is one of the biggest uses of wood and with increases in deliveries the need for cardboard could rise. Which would lead to a larger percentage of wood being used to make paper. If there were less paper use it could reduce the amount of wood in demand but I don’t think it would completely stop deforestation yet it could reduce rates of deforestation slightly.
Finding alternatives to beef
Finding alternative food sources over cattle.
As mentioned before 80% of deforestation results from extensive cattle ranching.
If we could find alternative food sources that take less area to grow or require less area to live we could use less land and less land would have to be deforested.
The positives of this solution would be less deforestation, more land to grow trees and other crops, less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as we could replant trees in the space that would be saved and less methane emissions as cows are a major cause of methane emissions. Another benefit could be lower cholesterol levels as beef is a red meat. Now let’s look at some alternatives to beef. Well of course there is plant-based meat but are they actually better for the environment? Yes, plant-based meat has less greenhouse gas emissions as compared to other meat and especially beef. Here is a graph that shows this. The downsides of this solution are that it would make a lot of people unhappy and it would be difficult to achieve.
Farmland Change
In some areas of the world, Silvopasture is becoming more common. This is when farmers plant trees within the fields where the animals graze. The results are surprising, as not only is there an increase in biodiversity, but milk yields and beef production increase. One reason is that the trees provide shelter for the animals, which reduces heat stress and improves general well-being.
In some countries farmers are incentivised, with government funding, to add trees into their pastures instead of being given money to keep adding more fertilisers which no longer add value to poor, overfarmed soils.
Favourite Solution
Farmland change is my favourite solution, as it reduces the need to clear more forests, increases biodiversity, and improves animal welfare.
It was found in a study at the University of Reading, that Silvopastoral farming in Columbia increases biodiversity, to a similar level to that found in nearby forests, and only half of the insects found were plant-eating, compared to traditional methods of farming.
The silvopastoral method also increases farm productivity without having to increase the area needed, so farmers do not have to chop down nearby forests.
Conclusion
My conclusion is that there are a lot of factors that cause deforestation. This makes it a difficult issue to solve. However, there are some solutions that are already being implemented globally. There is now more need for governments to do something as the consequences are becoming clearer to the earth's climate and the species loss that it entails.
We need to change our lifestyle, using fewer products that result from deforestation, such as palm oil, soy, and the worst culprit, beef.
Governments can help by shifting their monetary incentives away from traditional fertiliser subsidies, to encouraging farm diversity, through a change to silvopasture, and forest conservation.
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