Agricultural expansion is the main cause of the deforestation in the world. Oil palm plantations, the development of crops to feed animals, the mining of metals and precious minerals, are major causes of deforestation. Many of the poor and itinerant small farmers also participate in deforestation, since they burn forests to be able to sow small plots of land.
Eg Brazil, primary forests are destroyed to grow soybeans that feed livestock, and sugar cane to produce bioethanol, while in Indonesia, the lands are cleared of trees to plant oil-producing palm trees, which flood the products of the supermarkets and could soon even feed cars.
La expansion agricultural it is also the consequence of the demographic increase of the world population.
The extraction of fossil fuels
Finally, the extraction of the oil and gas also plays a role since vast tracts of forest are damaged by exploitation and the laying of oil pipelines, not to mention the frequent leaks of oil or the exploitation of tar sands.
Illegal logging
La Explotacion illegal wood also plays an important role in deforestation. Europe bears a high responsibility for this degradation, since about a quarter of its timber imports come from illegal sources. It is estimated that between 50 and 90% of forest exploitation in the key tropical countries of the Amazon basin, Central Africa and Southeast Asia, comes from organized crime.
Loss of biodiversity
The forests they are home to more than 80% of the terrestrial biodiversity and represent one of the last refuges for many animal and plant species. For this reason, deforestation is a catastrophe both for man and for other species, since it is estimated that 27.000 species of animals and plants disappear each year due to the destruction of trees. This loss of biodiversity, which may be irreversible, cuts humanity off of invaluable services and resources. Indeed, food systems are highly dependent on biodiversity, and a considerable proportion of medicines are of biological origin.
Great article.
I would highlight the production of biofuels, which was sold to us as an environmentalist practice and in the end it was not.
Now it's palm oil.
And since always, agriculture and livestock have been the main causes of deforestation.