Worldwide forests account for a third of the global land, they support wildlife and plant life, moderate climate, and offer human benefits. But deforestation still goes on at this staggering pace mainly due to agricultural activities, logging, mining and infrastructural developments.
The major cause of deforestation is seen to be agriculture. Human population on the planet is on the rise thus the food and agricultural land becomes scarce. deforestation occurs for production of major commodities such as soy, palm oil and cocoa besides grazing and other cultivation for food. Some four billion hectares have been cleared during human history for agriculture alone and new farmlands are being carved from forest at a few million hectares a year.
Yet another direct human cause of deforestation is commercial logging and timber harvesting. Most logging is selective, used to get such valuable timber species as mahogany for furniture and for flooring, but now and then, logging wipes out entire old growth forests. They also allow new settlement of forests and agricultural expansion as the new logging roads make access easier. While the logging of timber is legal worldwide, there are limitations placed on these practices, this despite the fact that there is huge losses to revenues as well as to the conservation of the environment due to what is referred to as Illegal logging.
The concrete structures such as roads, bridges, dams and other facilities that support infrastructure development are another cause that push away forests. Many-human activities such as construction of roads, railways, pipelines, and power lines defy the apparently impermeable barrier of forests, likewise human settlements, for example, growing cities, towns, or suburbs. These changes continuous fragment and degrading forests on a very large scale every year. Mining for minerals, oil and natural gas and other extractive industries clear forests to get to the underlying products.
The more acute deforestation is observed in the regions containing the largest concentration of species: Brazil and other countries of South America, Central Africa, and many islands of South koduase Asia. The conservative measures have proven effective to some extent where they have been applied but rates of deforestation are still very high globally. From 2015 to 2020 the world lost an average of roughly 10 million hectares of forest each year, down from an average one billion hectares per year in the 1990s but still equivalent to the size of Iceland.
They pointed out that the leading negative impact of deforestation is that it endangers plant and animal populations and exacerbates the loss of species’ habitats. Habitat loss through fragmentation changes the interior forest habitat on which some species, sensitive to edge effects, rely on. About 70 percent of the documented species worldwide reside in forests, and thus, deforestation threatens many with extinction. Individuals of big-bodied species such as orangutans, tigers and forest elephants drastically decline as their homes are cleared.
Here, too, there are numerous severe social and economical repercussions of deforestation. It is estimated that more than 1.6 billion people depend in some way on forests for parts of their income, food, fuel, fiber, and medicines, and other needs. Some people depend on the forests as social and cultural assets to support their culture and customary livelihoods. It also leads to conflict concerning land use rights between the people, state, and other organizations and companies.
Forests also perform significant functions of supporting ecosystems, which contributes to humanity’s quality and quantity of life at different levels – local, regional, and global. Also, one of the Southern Regions important resources is that forests act as carbon sinks, they stabilize climate and rainfall. This means that through phenomena such as deforestation, climate change is worsened since the carbon stored builds up in the environment. This simply implies that as we cut down our forests we deny our selves natural water filtering services. Watering point source, precipitating, eradicating floods, and purifying pollutants through trees, soil, and wetlands. This has raised questions on the effects of deforestation, floods and water pollution disturbances downstream.
Other impacts are also economic repercussions of deforestation that affects dependent industries like agriculture, forestry, fishing and food production industries, energy and tourism industries among others that rely on effective functioning of forest ecosystems. For instance, decreased mangrove forests in Southeast Asia cause decreased coastal fishery. Where inland forests are auctioned, nations fail to harness value-added revenues from businesslike production and sales of premium timber, fruits, nuts, rubber, vines, and other marketable end products of the forests. It reduces the quality of water even public health is also affected by deforestation locally, the chances of getting any infectious diseases such as malaria are bound to rise.
Yet the various social, environmental and economic benefits which ecosystems present to humanity, we still degrade these forests at our own risk. Tackling the problem of deforestation and consequently mitigating on the issue of rate of deforestation calls for major inter-sectorial approaches. Simplifying sustainable agricultural practices, regulating against people using forests il leisure acts or logging activities, increasing protected forest space, empowering local and indigenous people, and making forests become financially compelling to counter unsustainable land utilization will be part of broad strategies moving forward. By working together in supply chain and development sectors it is possible to reach the level of zero deforestation within our lifetime.