Factoid:
About 17,000 square miles of the Amazon forest were cut or burned in 1998 -- an area larger than Switzerland. In all, at least 217,000 square miles, or 16 percent, of the Amazon forest has been destroyed by human activity.
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Factoid:
Destruction of forest habitats in Africa, Asia and Latin America due to human encroachment is contributing to the greatest mass extinction of plant and animal species seen on Earth in the last 65 million years.
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Much Deforestation Driven By Population, Poverty
Marginalized by the spread of commercial farming and ranching enterprises, subsistance farmers are forced to destroy large amounts of tropical forest for new farmland.
Start Date: 5/25/99
A report in Global Futures Bulletin #84, dated May 15, 1999, states that up to 66% of tropical deforestation is caused by slash-and-burn farming.
Subsistence-level farmers in much of Africa, Asia and Latin America were not always a main cause of forest loss. Generations of farmers were able to rotate their crop planting from year to year without clearing large amounts of additional forest. But the advent of large-scale commercial farming and cattle ranching, and the rapid population increase in much of the developing world, has changed that.
Now, many small farmers are pushed off their lands by larger commercial operations and seek new farmland by cutting the forest. Population growth of up to 3% per year adds further pressure to cut virgin forest for farming.
In order of significance, the direct causes of deforestation are seen as slash-and-burn farming, commercial agriculture, cattle ranching, and then logging. In Latin America, infrastructure development -- building of roads and other structures -- is next in significance after logging. In Africa, another cause of deforestation is the spread of refugees from numerous civil wars.
Behind the direct causes of deforestation are the deeper issues of rapid population growth -- with up to 3 billion more people expected in the developing world by the year 2050 -- and poverty. Also driving deforestation in some countries is the need to service national debt through the unwise or poorly regulated exploitation of forests; the spread of large-scale mining and dam-building; and a general lack of appreciation for the role of forests in the environmental balance of the earth.
Among the negative consequences of deforestation are major losses of bio-diversity (extinction rate estimates range from 1 to 150 species per day); acceleration of global warming; destruction of indigenous communities; loss of soil; and faster water run-off with more susceptability to both flooding and drought.
Though exact figures are hard to obtain, it is estimated that approximately 1% of remaining tropical forest is currently destroyed every year. This equates to approximately 0.4% of earth's total forest area destroyed per year. [Based on a report of the Institute for Global Futures Research (IGFR). Email igfr@peg.apc.org for further information.]
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