"Deforestation Dilemma: Confronting the Environmental Crisis of Our Time"
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Deforestation
With the increasing population and rapid industrialisation, more and more forest is being laid down each day to fulfil humans' humongous greed. Deforestation can be defined as the purposeful clearing of forested land for several reasons: agriculture, timber, industrialisation, infrastructure, etc.
The present-day developed countries went through this process a few hundred years ago, while the less developed or underdeveloped countries of Africa and South America are currently going through this process. The forest area in Europe is reduced to 34%, China to 20% and the USA to about 37%.
In the last three decades, the tropical regions of the planet have seen rapid deforestation for sugarcane, palm oil, and rubber cultivation. Even after continuous efforts by environmentalists, the Amazonian forest alone lost about 1 billion acres, or almost the size of Israel, in forest cover in 2020.
Causes of Deforestation
The major reason for deforestation is industrialisation and overpopulation. Moreover, certain recessive agricultural practices like slash and burn are also partially responsible for deforestation. In slash and burn, farmers burn a part of the forest and let the wood ash decimate into the soil as fertiliser.
But after a few years, the land becomes infertile due to overexploitation, and the farmers move to a new area to repeat the process, destroying a large part of nature. Forest fires, either natural or artificially induced, are also a big reason for decreasing forest cover in tropical regions.
Effects of Deforestation
Reduction in forest cover is leading to drastic changes in the Earth’s climate and habitat. Trees intake carbon dioxide as a raw material during photosynthesis and store it as solid carbon in their woody parts. With fewer trees, the CO2 concentration increases, causing the greenhouse effect and trapping the sun’s heat in the earth’s atmosphere.
Deforestation is a major contributor to global warming and ultimately to climate change. Abnormal rain and snowfall are some examples of what cutting down trees is doing to our home planet.
Moreover, forests are home to thousands of species, and deforestation leaves them no place to live. Hundreds of species are already on the verge of extinction, and we humans are to blame. Several experts say that we are already in the midst of mass extinction, and if things do not change, the 21st century will last for hundreds or maybe even thousands of species on the planet.
We have been taught about the necessity of trees for the planet Earth. Yet, we feel no hesitation in destroying the forests for our greed.
We are paying a heavy price for this irresponsible behaviour in the form of floods, forest fires, rising sea levels, etc. It is time that we take responsibility for the destruction we have caused and save the earth as we know it.
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