Borneo’s Forests are Being Scarred
Indonesia’s Borneo’s epic rain-forests are being cleared at a faster rate per acre than the Amazon’s. This might seem like a minor concern, since the island accounts for only 1 percent of the earth’s land. But according to the World Wildlife Fund, Borneo’s forests hold 6 percent of the planet’s plant and animal species. Many are now being driven toward extinction, or being extinguished before they can even be identified — all because of consumer demands around the world.
(Smithsonian Mag)
Hundreds years ago, woodlands covered half the land of the Earth. Today, only about 25% remains forested. The rate of deforestation is highly accelerated in recent decades, with the loss of a 165.000 sq miles of forest between the year 2000 and 2012 alone.
Forests provide food, shelter, and products for billions of people around the world. Tropical rainforest store more carbon than any other type of forest and there’s no bigger rainforest on earth than South America’s Amazon Jungle. It stores about half the carbon of all the world’s forests to combine. But close to a fifth of the Amazon rainforest has been destroyed in just the last four decades.
When forests are burned, as the example the wildfire that recently happened in Riau, Indonesia, they released their stored carbon into the atmosphere, accelerating global warming and intensifying the increasing of water sea level. The destruction of the rainforests is a huge contributor to the climate change. And you still don’t believe this, Trump.
The Earth is also in the midst of the sixth mass extinction of plants and animals between 20 to 50 percent of all species are threatened with extinction. An this is because of habitat destruction due to global deforestation. as an example, in Australia, 40% of the country’s unique eucalyptus forests are now gone. And the lovely native Koala has begun to disappear in just two years between 2012 to 2014.
So What’s Driving Deforestation?
What’s causing deforestation? the short answer, it’s us. Millions of acres of forest have been logged to build farms and to grow crops like soybeans and rice. Logging for timber, mining, Palm Oil industry, and the expansion of cities have also contributed to widespread deforestation.
Can we turn global deforestation around?
Maybe.
According to the United Nations, deforestation slowed in recent years but the rate of deforestation remains alarmingly high. To save the trees we need to minimize the impact of our consumer economy on the world’s forests as individuals that means each of us needs to consider our own contribution to deforestation.
We can start to act with small things, by maybe, reducing our daily consumption. And buying only products that are made environment-sustainable and we need to do it. Now.
