Deforestation

Causes and consequences:
The biggest cause of deforestation is agriculture. Around 90% of deforestation happens beacause of agricultural expansion, according to The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

Deforestation will and are having massive consequences. Trees store CO2 naturally, as they need CO2 to carry out the photosynthesis, and when they die, all the CO2 they stored gets released into the air and the atmosphere. There is usually no reforestation after the deforestation, as the goal is often to utilize the space left behind from the deforestation, for example for agricultural expansion. Therefore

Photo by: gryffyn m

Two photos of halfway deforested forests

Across the globe we have massive forests, spreading far and wide through every continent, and these forests holds an enormous amount of the earth's biodiversity, and they are massive carbon collectors! Since trees and forests store massive amounts of CO2, deforestation is an enormous driver of global warming. Still, humans deforest a lot of these natural treasures, and they are shrinking at a massive rate! But how much forest do we chop down? Why does it matter?

Key words:

Deforestation
Biodiversity
Habitat

What is deforestation?

Deforestation is when forest gets chopped down on purpose. This usually happens on larger scales, and is devestating for the species and wildlife living in the forest, resulting in them losing their habitats.

1 soccer field worth of rainforest gets lost every 6 seconds according to The Guardian in an article from 2020! In a minute, that would be 10 soccer fields worth of rainforest!
In a year, around 10 000 000 hectars worth of forest across the globe gets deforested, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. 10 000 000 hectars is a bit larger than the entire country of Portugal!

Deforestation causes so much greenhouse gas emissions that 10-15%(!) of the world's total greenhouse gas emissions comes from deforestation in some kind of way.

Photo by: Annie Spratt

To deforest means to chop down forest.

the emitted CO2 goes straight to the atmosphere, and there is nothing to compensate for the greenhouse gas emissions. So when the forests shrink there will be less trees, causing more and more CO2 to be released into the atmosphere, and less and less to get collected and stored.
In total around 10-15% of the worlds greenhouse gas emissions happens due to deforestation!

Another big consequence of deforestation is the loss of biodiversity. Deforestation destroys the habitats of the different species living there, and therefore since different forests are habitats for so many different kinds of species, many species gets endangered or even go extinct. Species gets endangered due to deforestation because deforestation is such a big change that the species either don't have time to adapt to the new surroundings, or because they have to compete with other species for space, at expense for either their own specie or another.

How can we prevent deforestation?

Here is a list of a few things you can do to help prevent deforestation:

Deforestation is such a big problem in the world that it needs to be taken into account, and we need to do something about it. It is more difficult for us as individuals to work against deforestation, since we can't really directly prevent people from deforesting, because that's beyond our circle of influence, but we can still do some things to indirectly help out the world's forests for the better!