Deforestation
Deforestation refers to the large-scale clearing of forests, primarily for agricultural or commercial purposes. This process leads to the permanent removal of trees and vegetation, resulting in significant environmental impacts such as loss of biodiversity, disruption of ecosystems, and contribution to climate change. Deforestation is a pressing global issue with far-reaching consequences for both the environment and human societies.
8 Key excerpts on "Deforestation"
eBook - ePubDeforestation
Social Dynamics in Watersheds and Mountain Ecosystems
- J. Ives, D.C. Pitt, J. Ives, D.C. Pitt(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...3 Soil and Water Impacts of Deforestation * * A version of this paper was originally presented to the 16th Pacific Science Congress, Seoul, Korea, August 1987 L.S. Hamilton and A.J. Pearce At the outset, we wish to set forth an important semantic ground rule concerning the harvesting of forest products. This activity has frequently been called ‘Deforestation’ in the press and indeed in some technical writing. It is our contention that use of the term ‘Deforestation’ must be discontinued, if scientists, forest land managers, government planners and environmentalists are to have meaningful dialogue on the various human activities that affect forests, and the biophysical consequences of those actions. The generic term ‘Deforestation’ is used so ambiguously that it is virtually meaningless as a description of land-use change. It has been used at times to refer to any or all of the following activities with respect to existing forest: fuelwood cutting; commercial logging, shifting cultivation; forest clearing for conversion to continuous annual cropping, to grazing, to food, beverage or industrial tree crops, to forest plantations; and finally where burning has produced a degraded forest...
eBook - ePubAgricultural Expansion and Tropical Deforestation
International Trade, Poverty and Land Use
- Solon L. Barraclough, Krishna B. Ghimire, Krishna B. Ghimire(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The world’s temperate forests have been reduced by over one-third in recent centuries. Many of these formerly forested areas were cleared for agricultural and other human uses. Much of this former forest land now supports large and relatively prosperous populations with highly productive farms, industries and cities. Deforestation has apparently stabilized in industrialized countries. There are also large once-forested areas in the tropics that have supported dense populations for centuries. People denied other alternatives than wresting a bare living by clearing forest will try to survive even where conditions render continuous cultivation unsustainable. At the same time, lucrative short-term profits can frequently be reaped by powerful élites in both industrialized and developing countries. Northern investors and consumers commonly benefit disproportionately from cash crop and timber exports from the tropics at the expense of forest-dependent poor people in the South and a sustainable environment. Many interrelated processes contribute to tropical Deforestation. Agricultural expansion is prominent among them, but this in turn includes numerous sub-processes responding to different dynamics. Moreover, local level Deforestation processes differ greatly from place to place and over time. Simplistic generalizations based on global or regional and national data are not very helpful in understanding the complex causes and social and ecological impacts of Deforestation, or in suggesting remedial actions, in specific localities. An analytical case study approach is more appropriate. This was shown by the authors’ earlier research into the social dynamics of Deforestation (Barraclough and Ghimire, 1995). P RINCIPAL Q UESTIONS G UIDING THE R ESEARCH The research first reviewed estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and a number of other international sources of recent land use changes and Deforestation trends in developing countries...
eBook - ePubForest Politics
The Evolution of International Cooperation
- David Humphreys(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Chapter 1 Deforestation as a Global Political Issue THE POLITICAL COMPLEXITY OF Deforestation Deforestation as an issue has assumed a global prominence in the past decade. In Africa, the Amazon and Asia tropical forests have been disappearing at an alarming rate. The problem is by no means confined to the tropics, and Deforestation of temperate forests has accelerated in recent years in, to name just two areas, British Colombia and Siberia. This chapter will examine the problem of Deforestation as a political issue. Why is Deforestation important? Who is it important to? Why does it occur? And who are the political actors that contest the issue? Deforestation can be defined as the conversion of forests to other land uses. It is necessary to distinguish between Deforestation and forest degradation. The United Nations has defined Deforestation as occurring when ‘a forest is cleared to give way to another use of the land’. Forest degradation refers to changes in forest quality and occurs ‘when the species diversity and the biomass are significantly reduced through, for instance, unsustainable forms of forest utilization’. 1 Myers refers to Deforestation as ‘the complete destruction of forest cover … [so] that not a tree remains and the land is given over to non-forest purposes’. 2 Tropical Deforestation became a source of international concern in the early 1980s, whereas Deforestation of temperate and boreal forests received high-level international attention only in the early 1990s. Indeed the destruction of non-tropical forests has only recently assumed the same prominence as tropical Deforestation on the international agenda. Deforestation is an intrinsically complex global issue. This complexity arises from two broad factors. First, Deforestation introduces a wide range of political actors, from government and international civil society, with a direct or an indirect stake in forest use...
eBook - ePubForests
Environmental Issues, Global Perspectives
- James Fargo Balliett(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Such impacts include local climate alterations such as temperature increases, reduced rainfall and increased drought, increased erosion, and loss of biodiversity. And while logging produces profits in the short term, the long-term economic effects are not positive, resulting in little long-term financial stability for the region. While the encouragement to protect southern forests has come predominantly from countries in the Northern Hemisphere, Deforestation often has been due to the Northern Hemisphere’s economic demand for tropical wood products. A number of partnership programs have been developed in response to this demand and consequent rapid forest loss. The World Bank, with headquarters in Washington, D.C., often works to finance large infrastructure projects with developing countries. The World Bank now scrutinizes these financial agreements to limit tropical Deforestation by implementing forest conservation and management efforts. Although historically criticized for poor oversight on loans for projects that caused environmental harm—such as building factories and roads, dredging shipping channels, and building dams—The World Bank has made measureable gains in terms of forest conservation and management issues in recent years. In 2002, The World Bank released Forests Strategy, a planning document that sets policies to improve the conservation of forestland. As loan amounts and conditions increased over the years, a more detailed guidebook was needed to help government officials manage both resources and business growth. In 2008, The World Bank released The Forests Sourcebook, an updated resource for borrowing countries that helps to guide them through methods to best conserve forested areas while allowing sustainable economic development. Deforestation and Climate Change In addition to human-generated pollution such as vehicle and factory emissions, Deforestation also has played a prominent role in global warming and climate change...
eBook - ePubThe Global Casino
An Introduction to Environmental Issues
- Nick Middleton(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Throughout the history of most cultures, Deforestation has been one of the first steps away from a hunting–gathering and herding way of life towards sedentary farming and other types of economy. Forests were being cleared in Europe in Mesolithic and Neolithic times, but in central and western parts of the continent an intense phase occurred in the period 1050–1250. Later, when European settlers arrived in North America, for example, Deforestation took place over similarly large areas but at a much faster rate: more woodland was cleared in North America in 200 years than in Europe in over 2000 years. Estimates suggest that in pre-agricultural times the world’s forest cover was about 5 billion hectares (Mather, 1990). In 2015, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) concluded that natural and plantation forests covered just under 4 billion hectares (FAO, 2016a). Although most of this loss has taken place in the temperate latitudes of the northern hemisphere, in recent decades the loss in this zone has been largely halted, and in many countries reversed by planting programmes. Meanwhile, in the tropics, rapidly increasing human populations and improved access to forests have combined in recent times to create an accelerating pace of Deforestation, which has become a source of considerable concern both at national and international levels. This chapter concentrates on the humid tropics, while information on forest clearance in the drier parts of these latitudes can be found in Chapter 5. Deforestation Rates Despite the high level of interest in Deforestation, our knowledge of the rates at which it is currently occurring is far from satisfactory. In part, this is because of the lack of standard definitions of just what a forest is and what Deforestation means. A distinction is often made between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ forest or woodland, which is sometimes defined according to the percentage of the land area covered by tree crowns...
eBook - ePub- Alan Grainger(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...6 The environmental effects of Deforestation and logging There is no more powerful or straightforward reason for wanting to conserve the tropical rain forests than that their removal would destroy one of the planet’s most valuable ecosystems and a priceless part of our natural heritage. But we can go further than this, and point to the threat that Deforestation and logging pose to the rich biological diversity of tropical rain forests, which are thought to contain half of all the world’s species of plants and animals. Problems also arise because of the soil degradation, changes in water flows and increased sedimentation of rivers, reservoirs and irrigation systems caused by Deforestation and logging. Finally, owing to the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere after the burning of cleared vegetation, Deforestation contributes to the greenhouse effect that is expected to lead to climate change on a global scale that could be felt by everybody in the world within decades. This chapter looks at these three major environmental effects of Deforestation and logging. The threat to biological diversity Our planet contains at least 10 million species of plants and animals and probably a great many more – as many as 30 million if some projections of the number of insect and other invertebrate species are correct, though there is a lot of uncertainty about this (Erwin, 1983; Wolf, 1987). Each day most of us interact with just a few of these species in the food we eat, our domesticated animals, the plants in our gardens, and wild birds and insects. It is hard to imagine what millions of species mean in practice, but they are just one aspect of the immense biological diversity of our planet, commonly shortened to ‘biodiversity’. This has three main components: ecosystem diversity, species diversity, and genetic diversity...
eBook - ePub- Edward B Barbier, Joanne C. Burgess Barbier, Joshua Bishop, Bruce Aylward(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Even though some clearing occurs in virgin forests, there is reason to assume that the bulk of Deforestation is due to forests that have been logged over prior to the clearing of the respective areas. d These figures reflect averages for 1981–8 or, in the case of Indonesia, 1980–90. Source Amelung and Diehl (1992) THE LINKS BETWEEN THE TIMBER TRADE AND Deforestation A number of studies have attempted to assess the relative importance of various economic activities, including timber extraction, in causing tropical Deforestation. For example, Binswanger (1989) and Mahar (1989) highlight the role of subsidies and tax breaks, particularly for cattle ranching, in encouraging land clearing in the Brazilian Amazon. More recent analysis by Schneider et al (1990) and Reis and Marguilis (1991) emphasize the role of agricultural rents, population pressures and roadbuilding in encouraging small-scale frontier settlement in this region. The study by Schneider et al (1990) also identifies the importance of logging – log production from the Amazon region increased from 4.5 mn m 3 in 1975 to over 24.5 mn m 3 in 1987 – in forest exploitation, primarily through opening access to previously inaccessible lands. Commercial timber extraction has been encouraged by both a range of public policies, increasing domestic demand, and a strong international demand for tropical hardwoods. However, most of the work is extremely tentative and constrained to qualitative analysis because of the problems outlined earlier. A few studies have used statistical analysis to explore the linkages among factors thought to cause forest land clearance. There are a number of important caveats that need to be bome in mind when reviewing the statistical studies of factors thought to contribute to Deforestation. Firstly, all the analyses suffer from the usual problem of reliability and accuracy of data...
eBook - ePubTropical Deforestation
A socio-economic approach
- C. J. Jepma(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Other causes of Deforestation are the construction of infrastructure, for example roads and hydroelectric dams, mining, silviculture, and perennial cropping. All these factors are interrelated however, which makes them nearly imputable. For instance, large tracks of forest are sequentially logged, turned into fields, and finally, after three or four years, turned into pastures. Recent estimates by Amelung and Diehl (1992) of the contribution of the various factors indicate that agriculture is responsible for 89 per cent of Amazonian Deforestation (more precisely: pasture 40 per cent, arable land 32 per cent, shifting cultivation 13 per cent, and permanent crops 4 per cent). The remaining 11 per cent, according to this study, is caused by hydroelectric production (4 per cent), mining (less than 3 per cent), and forestry (2 per cent), mainly for charcoal production and an unexplained residual of 2 per cent. The underlying reasons why Brazilians increased their farming activities in Legal Amazonia are: • the favourable fiscal situation due to public policy, • the prevailing poverty, partly due to the unequal land and income distribution in Brazil as a whole, and • ecological ignorance. A comprehensive analysis of Deforestation in the Amazon region should therefore not be limited to the region itself but should also take the interregional relationships between Amazonia and the other parts of Brazil into account. In contrast with the causes of Deforestation in Africa and Asia, the growing population size does not seem to be a major explanatory factor in Brazil. According to Bilsborrow and Ogendo (1992), the average land area available to an economically active person in agriculture in Brazil in fact increased, from 2.4 hectares in 1965 to 5.7 hectares in 1987. In the next section’s attention will be given to the role of public policy in the Deforestation process in Amazonia interacting with the other factors mentioned earlier...
