Historical process

We need to be careful when comparing rates of deforestation. To know exactly how much they really mean, we have to see in how these rates were affected by history in specific locations. For example, Europe has a much longer historical deforestation process than in Brazil, enough time to have sixteen Brazilian civilizations, which makes comparisons hard to judge due to the historical differences.  

The people that got into Europe found a very forested place. Practicing the cut and burn type of agriculture, the same technique that would later be used in many places around the world, they not only planted the agricultural way but they also opened ways to Holland and Ukraine. Little by little, agricultural land replaced the original forests, new roads opened and civilization started to form. Fearnside (2005) claims that deforestation enables the claims for land, and cutting for cattle pasture was a cheap and effective way to claim a land in the past (681).

The history of deforestation continues after the navigations and discovery of America, as the Europeans found a market in selling the resources such as wood and gold from the New World. This was combined with a “discovery” process, which included chopping down the trees to reach new paths to connect the discovered places, as well as the search for gold and precious metals, that were many times connected to legends such as the myth of El Dorado (Fox, 2011), the city of gold, which many explorers tried to find, and the effects continued, as Houghton (1994) mentions that “28% of the forest area in Latin America was lost between 1850 and 1985 (308)”, which was due mainly to an increase in agricultural rates. Houghton also mentions that the numbers of land usage have been exponentially increasing as decades went by.   

1946 Educational Film about logging and sawmill in America available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MDgxNLDR64

Logging and loading process in 2009. Available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwaRh1dsu5Q

          The first video above shows how logging was in 1946, when this video was made. The second video is the same process, but more than 60 years later. It is clear how logging became stronger as technology allowed not only one log to be loaded but dozens. The two videos compared show the illustration of progression in our way of consumption, as demand of wood products increased, due to an increase in population and increase in consumption, and thus the logging process had to be perfected to meet this increase of demand. 

As cities started to grow and cars came along, there was also a need to construction of infrastructure, such as roads, and an even greater increase in the amount of land needed for agriculture, as well as the need for bigger cities and construction of houses, hospital and other infrastructural needs of cities. According to Houghton (1994), the land usage rates are parallel with population growth, and this can be seen as population starts to grow and the problem of deforestation starts to grow as well (305).

            When you go through years of consequences with deforestation, you learn how to improve. As for now, Europe has more than 35% of its forests reforested according to the Environmental Indicators in the United Nations website, and this numbers are growing every year*.The number of reforested area increased more than 25% since 1950, and in the Nordic countries the rates in forest covering come together with increase in development. The increase in reforestation measures in Europe can be seen as a consequence of its history.

            The graph below shows the land usage in our world today, and shows how much of the lands are now used for agriculture, a number that tends to rise as population grows and more food needs to be provided, and more houses and infrastructure need to be built in order to accommodate all the people. The world map illustrates how much of the soil is being used for agriculture purposes. What is already a big number tends to increase as population grows, which will further worsen the deforestation rates as land will become needed in order to provide food for the estimate of 9 billion people by 2050. 

            Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Major Agricultural Systems, available at http://www.fao.org/nr/solaw/maps-and-graphs/en/

* Compared to previous years of data

Work Cited:

Houghton, R.A. "The Worldwide Extent Of Land-Use Change." Bioscience 44.5 (1994): 305-313. Academic Search Complete. Web. 14 Apr. 2013.

FEARNSIDE, PHILIP M. "Deforestation In Brazilian Amazonia: History, Rates, And Consequences." Conservation Biology 19.3 (2005): 680-688. Environment Complete. Web. 16 Apr. 2013.

Arturo A. Fox - Latinoamérica: presente y pasado - Boston - Prentice Hall - 2011 - 4th Ed.

ENVIRONMENTAL INDICATORS: Forests" United Nations Statistics Division - Statistics compiled by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) available at http://unstats.un.org/unsd/environment/forestarea.htm.