What are the costs of rainforest deforestation? Lauren Jurd
What are the costs?
“The value of forest is often higher when it is left standing then it could be worth when it is harvested.”
Humans depend on the rainforests for many reasons. Rainforests have many aesthetic, recreational, economic, historical, cultural, and religious values to humans. First, timber and other natural resources produced in the forests are important economically both locally and as exports. One third of the world's people depend on wood for fuel as significant energy source. It is important that the government keeps close attention to make sure that no natural resources are completely depleted. Other non-wood forest products come in the form of medical compounds, dyes, food, and fabrics. Some of the plants for the rainforest have proved to be of great importance because they provide vital medicines. At least one quarter of the world’s most medicines come from the rainforest. For example, the rosy periwinkle can over come on kind of leukemia. The variety of treatments include painkillers, cough mixtures, drugs that are capable of relieving anxiety, birth control pills, anesthetics, antibiotics and cancer-fighting drugs. Most of these plants haven’t been carefully tested for their potential as medicines. Rubber, cosmetics, soaps, cane furniture, and the fibers in cords and ropes are all made from some kind of seed, flower or leaf in the rainforest. An astounding number of food and drinks that can be found in your own house come from rainforest plants. Coffee, bananas, rice, tea, cacao (which makes chocolate), avocados, oranges, and pineapples are all found in the forest. Plants producing spices like cinnamon, clove, cardamom, nutmeg, and ginger are found there too. Did you know chewing gum comes the rainforest too? Native crops in plantations outside the jungle tend to lack qualities like flavor and disease resistance that many crops originally growing wildly in the rainforest have. There are so many useful materials that lay waiting to be discovered in the rainforest. However, some native crops with great commercial value are already being depleted like the pummelo and the mangosteen. It is possible to harvest these products while still leaving the forest intact. More leaves, flowers, seeds, and sap will continue to keep forming as long as the forest stands.
The rainforests also provide employment for those who harvest the products of the forest. Herbalists, rubber tappers, hunters, and collectors of fungi, nuts, bamboo, and berries are able to utilize such resources. They depend on the rainforest because their lives revolve around it. They are willing to fight for it. A great example of this is Chico Mendes, who was a rubber tapper in the Amazon rainforest. Rubber tappers collect or “tap” rubber from the rubber trees that grow naturally in the rainforest. They use the forests natural resources in a sustainable way. Mendes and the other rubber tappers opposed the attempts by wealthy landowners in Brazil to clear away the forests for ranching land. The Amazonian Indians supported and joined Mendes and many others in the rubber tappers’ union to try and save the rainforest. Mendes, who used a non-violent struggle, gained many enemies among those who intended to destroy the rainforest. This caused his death on December 22, 1988, when his enemies shot him. Even though he is gone, the Indians and rubber tappers will not give up. At his funeral they carried a banner that read, “They killed our leader, but not our struggle.” Indigenous cultures are being destroyed as well.
Along with their habitat, animals living in the rainforest are being wiped out. Having a variety of life is nature’s secret weapon for keeping Earth alive and kicking. Tropical rainforests contain over oneself of the world's total species. Cutting down the rainforest is causing thousands of species to become extinct. For example, the black caiman is being extinct. Some of these life forms are even disappearing before they can be discovered. Nature needs rainforest species so that as many kinds of living things as possible will keep changing, and even more wonderful species will eventually evolve on Earth.
Nature needs the rainforest. Trees protect the soil against erosion. The removal of rainforest will leave behind bare land, which makes it possible for large amounts of water to run off the land instead of usually being trapped by trees. This means soil is washed away causing floods, landslides, and avalanches. The Panama Cannel was clogged up in 1977 when large amounts of silt and mud were washed off the land. In addition, rainforests affect climate and are an important source of oxygen. Rainforest plants take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and turn it into substances that are vital for growth and life. However, burning the forests releases gases into the atmosphere, which add to the greenhouse effect causing global warming. In this process, heat is trapped in the atmosphere by certain gases like C02. This threatens to raise the earth’s temperature, with disastrous results. Over a billion tons of CO2 are estimated to be released from rainforest burning every year. Rainforest destruction also upsets the delicate hydrological cycles that control rain. In the Amazon, 50% of rainfall is recycled by evapotranspiration, which is the process that returns rain caught by trees and plants to the atmosphere. Another 25% is returned through direct evaporation from leaves. Without the thick canopy of the rainforest this “recycling” cycle is broken. The area is more venerable to droughts and fire. Since there is no vegetation in the canopy, rain can pound into the earth, washing away the soil. The soil is clogged in rivers killing the fish. Since the nutrients of the soil are washed away it is difficult for plants to grow.
One of the most alarming aspects of the rainforest
destruction is that no one knows what is being lost. Our knowledge is very limited. If we have already found this much in so little time, then
how much more is out there to find in greater time? There must be lots to find,
which can help the world even more.
As author Darv Johnson writes, “We may be losing solution that we could
never dream up on our own.”
For a quick recap on the costs of rainforest deforestation:
The Many Costs!
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-Less fuel, which is greatly produced
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-Loss of medical treatments, cures, and vaccines
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-No food or spices that are grown in rainforest
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-Loss of rubber, fibers, makeup, etc.
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-Loss of many species
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-Loss of indigenous cultures
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-Ecological damage
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-Greenhouse effect/global warming
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-Droughts and fires
v -Floods, landslides, and avalanches
Need I say more…? We
depend on the rainforest, so don’t let it die!