Article On Deforestation In 120 Words

[Lucrecio Houle]

Deforestationis the clearing, or cutting down, of forests. The word is normally used to describe the actions of humans in removing forests from the planet, rather than destruction caused by such natural events as hurricanes.

People have been cutting down trees for thousands of years. In recent times, however, the number of forests being lost through deforestation has grown enormously. This is seen as a great problem that affects the environment in many important ways.

Experts estimate that about 500,000 square miles (1.3 million square kilometers) of land is deforested every 10 years. Half of that is primary forest, which means it has never been cut down before. The largest amount of deforestation is happening in tropical areas, where rainforests are being cut down. Most deforestation is permanent. Some areas do recover from this damage, but it can take many years.

In some countries, especially in tropical areas and in Southeast Asia, farmers cut down large trees and then set fire to areas of a forest to kill off all the animals and plants living there. The ash from the fire helps to fertilize the land, and crops can be grown for a few years before the land becomes useless. The farmers then leave the area and move to a new place. This traditional method of deforestation is called slash and burn.

Deforestation on steep mountain hillsides can lead to erosion. The land can get worn away because the trees are not there to hold the soil together. Heavy rains in such areas can wash the land down the slopes in disastrous landslides that destroy fields, homes, and human lives.

Forests are home to an enormous range of living things. When an area is deforested, many plants and animals are killed. Others lose their habitats. Some types of living things become extinct because of deforestation, especially those that live in tropical rainforests. The traditional way of life for rainforest peoples can be greatly affected by deforestation.

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Peter Kanowski was a Deputy Director General at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) for two years, to mid-2014, and is currently completing work for CIFOR that is unrelated to this article.

REDD was soon expanded to REDD+, to include forest management and restoration to enhance carbon stocks, and was one of the few points of agreement at the otherwise anti-climatic 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference.

However, in the absence of a more general international agreement to address climate change and provide the framework and funds for REDD+ on more than a pilot scale, REDD+ initiatives have remained embryonic and inconsequential for addressing climate change or delivering economic benefits for forest conservation, management or restoration.

While REDD+ has progressed further than most other elements of the international climate change regime, the languishing state of REDD+ has become something of a metaphor for the overall state of global inaction on climate change.

For example, the Paris-based Consumer Goods Forum, which represents many global food processors and retailers, vowed to achieve zero net deforestation by 2020. They subsequently formed the Tropical Forest Alliance 2020 with the US government.

Major companies, such as Wilmar with a 45% market share of palm oil globally, and Asia Pulp and Paper, historically a major agent of deforestation in Sumatra, have made zero deforestation commitments.

NGOs such as Greenpeace and WWF have been advocates and brokers of these commitments, facilitated by research and tools from think-tanks such as the World Resources Institute. Governments such as those of the UK and the US, committed to both business and climate change goals, have fostered these initiatives.

In parallel, Norway, with its strong sovereign wealth fund and commitment to REDD+, has pursued international direct action, negotiating a Forest Moratorium with Indonesia in 2010 and REDD+-related payments with Brazil.

While the success of these initiatives has been mixed, they have together formed a much broader platform for addressing forest loss than just the intergovernmental agreement from which REDD first emerged.

In that sense the declaration is another coalition of the willing, with the same limitations that have constrained effective global action on forests since the 1992 Rio Statement of Forest Principles.

The Climate Summit also issued an Action Statement on Agriculture, Food Security and Nutrition, focused on improving productivity and incomes, greater resilience, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture.

This disjunct is also evident in the negotiation of the UN post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals. Addressing this disconnect in a landscape context remains important work in progress, and a necessary complement to what was agreed in New York.

The inclusion in the UN Summit of major corporations whose businesses drive much deforestation globally is welcome, as are their commitments to deforestation-free commodities. But it will be how seriously and rigorously that they implement their commitments that will matter more for deforestation and its consequences.

Carbon is one of the foundation elements of everything we see around us, including all living organisms on Earth. It exists in gas or solid form, with examples of the latter including rocks and sediments.

The ocean, forest, and soil are the biggest carbon sinks on Earth since they contain and absorb tremendous amounts of carbon dioxide and store them for prolonged periods of times. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Amazon forest alone store around 123 billion tons of carbon above and below the surface. Both abiotic and biotic components, such as rocks and even seemingly unimportant animals, are all collectively sequestering carbon in their bodies. Unfortunately, deforestation creates a direct disequilibrium in the carbon cycle.

While plants take the first hit in the event of deforestation, subsequently animals which rely on the vegetation are also wiped out. Land becomes barren and lifeless. Similarlly, as living organisms are slaughtered, the active carbon stored inside them is released into the atmosphere quickly, exacerbating the pace of global warming.

A report found that between 2015 and 2017, the gross emission of carbon due to tree loss was 4.8 billion tons annually. The total amount of carbon emissions from forest loss produced in just one year is equivalent to what 85 million cars would produce over their lifetime.

Over 80% of deforestation is directly associated with agricultural development. Slash and burn is the main deforestation method to expand agricultural land, for example through shifting cultivation and plantation. Normally, tropical farmers would clear the land on a massive scale by burning and cutting trees down. Vegetation burnt into ashes acts as a fertiliser.

Modern shifting cultivation accounts for 50 acres of forest land loss every hour. Nevertheless, the land is not going to be fertilised permanently; after just two years, nutrients in the soil will be drained, forcing farmers to find another piece of land. The vicious cycle goes on consistently. While carbon stored in living organisms is released into the atmosphere when they decay, the fire used in the slash-and-burn process also bumps smoke, another source of CO2, into the air.

The total amount of carbon released during this process is estimated at over 1.5 billion tons of carbon are released caused by the slash and burn process. Compared to the traditional technique, which is practiced by aboriginal people aiming to revert land into secondary forest, modern slash and burn cultivation does not take forest regeneration into account. Enormous amounts of land are turned into permanently infertile, barren land due to the colossal scale of, among others, oil palm tree planting and cattle raising.

Rice cultivation alone makes up 12% of global methane emission, and this without taking fertilisers, pesticides, and other chemicals used in the cultivation process into account. Livestock farming is even more devastating, generating about 27% of global methane emissions. It is estimated that every single cow produces 220 pounds (100 kilograms) of methane in a single year.

These statistics reflect the vital role of global forests in the scenario of fighting against climate change. Unfortunately, as the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) estimates, the world loses 10 million hectares of forest annually, equivalent to 300 football fields being cleared every hour. In other words, humans are wreaking havoc on one of the major systems that maintain the balance of climate, dumping one of the most salient weapons that is designed to combat global warming.

In the past four decades, around 17% of the Amazon forest has vanished. Scientists have warned that if forest loss reaches up to 25%, it will reach a tipping point where the lush rainforest might turn into a dried, dead savanna, due to the absence of rainfall, biome, and other vital factors in the ecosystem.

With the global population recently hitting the 8 billion mark and expected to keep growing in the coming decades, the demand for food and other resources is inevitably going to increase as well, resulting in further deforestation.

Adaptive Capacity

The ability of a system to adjust to climate change (including climate variability and extremes) to moderate potential damages, to take advantage of opportunities, or to cope with the consequences.

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