The future of the forests

Image available at http://factfile.org/deforestation-facts

 A world without forests is what awaits us at this rate. This image shows how forests almost disappeared in the United States. The original size of the Amazonian forest was the size of Occidental Europe. As for now, the size of the deforestation is the size of France (Fearnside, 2005).

            There is no life without forests. A lot of people, animals and plants rely on the forests for food and shelter as a natural habitat. The forests are considered to be the lungs of the world. Without trees, the carbon dioxide levels will reach very high levels that could further increase the effects of global warming. The climate would change and levels of oxygen would drop. Millions of species would die. We would have food scarcity due to the lack of land, as well as desert areas with scarcity of water due to a break in the water cycle. These changes are happening fast, as forest levels are shown to decrease every year.

            If we follow the current deforestation levels, the major forests of the world will collapse even before the last tree is chopped down. More than a billion people now depend on the forests for they human security as a way to provide them with shelter, food and primary needs. More than that, rain patters will change and the cycle of water will affect soil and food production. The graph bellow shows how population has been growing in the last 60 years and how it is expected to grow to over 9 billion by 2050. 

Graph from United State Census available at http://www.census.gov/population/international/data/worldpop/graph_population.php

            According to the International Data Base (IDB), world’s population is growing at a rate of 200,000 people a day, and in the next 25 years the world’s population will go over 9,000,000,000 people. Such increase will bring rises in the demand for food, which will than lead to an increase of deforestation for agriculture purposes. It will also require a greater infrastructure, and the use of land not only to build the required housing for all these people but also the construction of public goods, and other products such as furniture and construction material that will take with them some of the forest. The croplands would have to nearly double due to this 9 billion people population growth that is projected by 2050 (Kastner et al. 2012). The image below shows the progression of deforestation, and how it is predicted to be by 2050. The green area represents the forest covered area. 

Projection by Strassbourg et al., 2012, http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v2/n5/fig_tab/nclimate1375_F1.html

This video has comments on what is being done and how its likely to be in the future, as well as the opinion of the affected people in various areas. 

Work Cited:

Gurney, R.J, J.L. Foster, and C. L. Parkinson. 1993. Atlas of Satellite Observations related to Global Change, Cambridge Press, 1993.

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

International Data Base (IDB) – World Population at Census.gov. June 28, 2010. Retrieved April 21, 2013.

Kastner T, Rivas MJI, Koch W, Nonhebel, S. 2012. Global changes in diets and the consequences for land requirements for food. (Available from www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1117054109)

Strassburg BBN, Rodrigues ASL, Gusti M, Balmford A, Fritz A, Obersteiner M, Turner RK, Brooks TM. Impacts of incentives to reduce emissions from deforestation on global species extinctions. Nature Climate Change2:350–355