The Major Reason For Tropical Deforestation Is – Tropical forest trees, like all green plants, take in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and release oxygen during photosynthesis. They also do the opposite process – called respiration – but as forests grow, photosynthesis turns on respiration and excess carbon is stored in trees and tree roots and in the soil. This is called “Jayapatra”.
When forests are cut down, most of the stored carbon is released back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO).
The Major Reason For Tropical Deforestation Is
Tropical deforestation accounts for less than 10 percent of global warming pollution. This percentage has decreased in recent years, partly due to some success in reducing deforestation, but also because greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels – the main cause of climate change – are continuously increasing.
Deforestation And Forest Loss
Just four products – beef, soya, palm oil and wood products – contribute to the majority of the world’s deforestation. And users can help stop it.
The largest areas on the planet with tropical forests are the Amazon Basin in South America, the Congo Basin in Central Africa, and Southeast Asia. Deforestation levels and causes are very different in these three regions.
Forests are cut down to make way for a long list of agricultural products and other human activities. But most of the current tropical deforestation can be traced back to globally traded products: beef, soybeans, palm oil and wood products.
Amazonia has both the largest area of tropical forest and the highest rate of deforestation. Clearing forests to produce commodity crops, particularly beef pasture and soybean cropland, is a major incentive.
Global Biodiversity Loss From Tropical Deforestation
Deforestation in Southeast Asia is also driven by the production of products for the world market, but here oil palm plantations for vegetable oil are the most important factor. Southeast Asia is also different because it has a large amount of peatland, which emits a large amount of CO
In contrast, deforestation rates in the Congo Basin are low, driven mainly by traditional shifting cultivation. This means that forests can generate and absorb some of the CO
Strategies to reduce deforestation are underway in many places. Understanding this story can help us turn it into a global success story.
Deforestation alone will not stop climate change – the other 90 percent need immediate action to reduce emissions. But the need to protect tropical forests and regrow them in cleared areas cannot be ignored.
Threats Facing The Amazon Rainforest
It is now known that even mature tropical forests can absorb carbon; They removed billions of tons of heat-trapping gases from the atmosphere in the 1990s and early 2000s. And young secondary forests – those that return after being cleared – make up about 28 percent of tropical forests. Their absorptive capacity is conservatively estimated at about 40 percent of what would be achieved by ending deforestation, making them an additional important “natural climate solution.”
And ending deforestation and restoring forests has other benefits than reducing global warming pollution. Tropical forests contain many unique species of animals and plants that are at risk of extinction if we do not protect their habitats.
Tropical forests help regulate regional rainfall and prevent floods and droughts. Reducing deforestation is not only a beneficial measure to combat global warming – it can make a significant contribution to biodiversity conservation and support sustainable development.
The good news is that tropical deforestation can be reduced – and, in many places, already is. Various approaches have shown promising results, from recognizing indigenous groups’ sovereignty over their lands to civil society pressure against corporate deforestation to tropical countries paying for their deforestation emissions (known as “REDD+”).
Amazon Rainforest: Deforestation At Highest Rate In More Than A Decade
But there are also pitfalls. Brazil managed to cut 70 percent of deforestation between 2004 and 2012, but in the late 2010s Bolsonaro’s government weakened enforcement and launched racist attacks on indigenous groups and their lands, reversing some of those measures. . Continued progress requires continued commitment from governments, businesses and civil society around the world to end tropical deforestation.
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Around the world, fossil fuel companies are facing a new wave of lawsuits over their role in the climate crisis Three quarters of deforestation is driven by agriculture Most of it comes from the beef, palm oil, soy and logging industries.
Since the turn of the millennium, the world has lost around 5 million hectares of forest each year. Almost all of these occur in the tropics; About half of all deforestation occurs in Brazil and Indonesia.
Deforestation In Brazil’s Amazon Rainforest Hits 15 Year High
Three quarters are driven by agriculture. Beef production accounts for 41% of deforestation; Palm oil and soybeans account for a further 18%; and paper and wood logging throughout the tropics, another 13%. The industry is also dominant in several important countries.
The world loses around 5 million hectares of forest every year. 95% of these occur in the tropics. At least three-quarters of this is driven by agriculture – clearing forests for crops, raising livestock and producing products such as paper.
If we want to tackle deforestation, we need to understand two main questions: where are we losing the forest and what activities are leading to it. This allows us to focus our efforts on specific industries, products or countries that will have the greatest impact.
, Florence Pendrill and colleagues address these two questions. 2 They measure how much and where deforestation occurs from the expansion of cropland, pasture, and fields (for logging) and what crops are grown on this converted land. They combine this with global trade flows to assess how much of this deforestation is driven by international trade – we look specifically at the role of trade in a related article.
Brazil’s Amazon Deforestation Climbed 22% In A Year
A study by Pendrill et al. (2019) found that the tropics lost, on average, 5.5 million hectares of forest to agricultural land per year between 2005 and 2013. That was ten years ago, but the world is still losing the same amount today: using satellite data, researchers at Global Forest Watch estimate that deforestation worldwide was around 5.4 million hectares in 2019. 3 95% of these are in the tropics. But where are we losing these forests in the tropics?
In the chart we see the proportion of tropical deforestation by country and region. It is measured as an annual average between 2010 and 2014.
One third of tropical deforestation occurs in Brazil. that is 1.7 million hectares per year. Indonesia is the only other country that has lost large areas of forest – accounting for 14%. This means that almost half (47%) of tropical deforestation occurs in Brazil and Indonesia. Again, if we look at later satellite data, we see that this is still true today: in 2019, the world lost 5.4 million hectares to deforestation, including 52% in Brazil and Indonesia.4 As we will see later , grass for beef production The main drivers of the expansion are cropland for soy and palm oil, and increased conversion of primary forests to paper and pulp plantations.
The expansion of grasslands has had a major impact on land use across the Americas – accounting for about a fifth of deforestation in Latin America, outside of Brazil.
Land Tenure Drives Deforestation Rates In Brazil
Agricultural land expansion in Africa is responsible for about 17.5% of deforestation. This may underestimate the loss of forest cover in Africa for two reasons. Most of the deforestation in Africa is driven by subsistence farming activities, which are not always fully captured in national statistics. Second, depending on the persistence of agricultural activities such as slash and burn agriculture, some of this forest loss can be classified as temporary forest.
If we want to tackle deforestation, we need to know its causes. It allows us to avoid food that destroys forests or innovate in the way we produce it.
The beef stood out immediately. Increased grazing for livestock is responsible for 41% of tropical deforestation. That’s 2.1 million hectares a year – about half the size of the Netherlands. Most of this converted land came from Brazil; The increase in beef production accounts for a quarter (24%) of tropical deforestation. This also means that the majority (72%) of deforestation in Brazil is caused by cattle farming. 5 In other parts of Latin America – such as Argentina and Paraguay – cattle also account for a significant amount of deforestation – 11% of the total. So most beef deforestation occurs in Latin America, with 4% in Africa.
Palm and soybean oil often claim the headlines for their impact on the environment. These are classed as ‘oilseeds’, which also include a range of smaller crops such as sunflower, mustard and sesame seeds. They have deforested 18%. Here we see that its main ingredient is Indonesian palm oil. Oilseed development is also a major cause of forest loss in neighboring Malaysia. The soybean is the most common oilseed in Latin America. Although many people immediately think of food products like tofu or soy milk, the majority of global soybean production is used as animal feed or biofuel. Only 6% is used directly for human consumption. The IS
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