As the world spirals into climate change, many of our greatest forests are at risk. Not only is the looming threat of climate change real and could have disastrous effects for our way of life – companies and governments are destroying this land for either new complexes or simply resources. Despite the public’s outcry for something to be done, deforestation is at an all-time high.
In 2019 Climate Focus produced a report that found in 2014 to 2018 annual deforestation had increased by 44 percent compared to 2002 – 2013. It had also discovered that tropical rain forests were disappearing at a rate of 4.3 million hectares each year. To put that into retrospect, an area 5 times that of the MCG is being destroyed every minute for 24 hours a day… 7 days a week.
Since 1950 the total amount of rainforest covering the Earth’s surface has dropped by 9 percent down to 6 percent in total. If this rate of destruction continues, we will be left with only a few small pockets of rainforest at the end of the century. Not only do rainforests help regulate the climate they are also home to 50 percent of the globe’s animal and plant species. Destroying their habitat will effectively be destroying our eco-system.
Additionally, since rainforests are huge areas of tress, they help take carbon out of our atmosphere and replace it with oxygen. Destroying these ecosystems will speed up global warming if anything.
The Amazon rainforest is one of if not the most famous rainforests on the planet and unfortunately is at the centre of this crisis. There were regulations put in place by the Brazilian Worker’s Party government in the naughties and early twenty tens. Since far right president Jair Blosonaro took power the deforestation rate has increased.