Discussing the extent and causes of deforestation - Essay Example

Client's 26 November 2009 The world is indubitable changing at a very startling pace, roads, damns; industries are being build day in,day out. This takes a toll on the environment and inevitably results in deforestation. Human beings crave for wealth and in an attempt to gain as much wealth as possible often end up causing serious damage to the environment. This paper will throw light upon the causes of deforestation and it will also present the extent of deforestation. Cattle pasture contributes about 20-25% towards deforestation; cattle rearing is a very important source of income in Australia and a few other countries.

Small holder agriculture contributes about 35-45% towards deforestation. On the contrary large scale agriculture contributes about 15-20% towards deforestation. 10-15% is contributed by logging. The remaining 5% is by other activities. These other activities often include urbanization, forest fires, fuel wood collection so on and so forth. Activities like mining and urbanization are the major causes that lead to deforestation. The population increases with each passing day and when human beings have no place to live they turn towards the forests, they chop the forests and construct homes and other structures disturbing the balance of nature.

Logging often causes degradation, it triggers off deforestation but at the initial stage it only triggers off degradation of the soil. Africa and South America are two continents where deforestation has increased consistently over the past few years. North America and Central America have witnessed very less deforestation when compared to the likes of Africa and South America. Asia also has witnessed a lot of deforestation in past years, Oceania has also witnessed some deforestation but the magnitude is not as severe as seen in the other continents.

Africa witnessed about 3700 hectors of deforestation during 1990-2000 but this no came down in 2000-2005. In Rwanda which is in Africa a change of 50.9% took place in total forest covered during 1990-2005. Annual change of about 7.9% took place 2000-2005. Burundi is another country that witnessed tremendous change in forest land. A change of -47.4% was witnessed during 1990-2005. The annual change was about -4.6% during 2000-2005. To conclude it is very fair to say that a lot of deforestation is taking place all across the globe, Africa is arguably the leader in deforestation.

This can have a telling impact on the stability of the environment; several undesirable changes are very likely to take place because of deforestation. Less rain is one result which will be caused by deforestation; draught and famine are quite likely to happen should we keep cutting the tress at this rate. It is high time to wake up and realize our mistake, the more tress we plant, the better our environment will become. Planting tress is very important but that isn't happening, what's happening is nothing but deforestation and this will inevitably produce several undesirable changes which will impact the lives of countless people all across the globe.