Deforestation Solutions List

The total global forest cover is just over 31%¹. The Amazon, Central Africa, and South Asia are home to some of the world’s greatest forests. But as populations and resource demand rises, so has deforestation². In general, deforestation is the act of cutting down trees and the effects are a risk to climate change and global warming. There is an urgent need to stop deforestation or at least minimise it. Furthermore, it is also important to use other climate change reversal tools, such as reducing the use of fossil fuels.

Causes of Deforestation

The causes of deforestation are tremendous and are both direct and indirect³. Direct examples include natural hazards and landscape modification from human activities. So for instance, palm oil industries are especially dependent on empty lands. Likewise, important resources, such as wood products and paper products, are made from chopped trees⁴. Indirect causes take longer because it affects other factors before deforestation occurs. An important example is climate change which can bring pressure to current ecosystems. Where tree growth is reduced because of this pressure, timber industries that rely on trees could suffer⁵. A poor and lack of governance can also endanger forests.

Impacts of Deforestation

Deforestation has far-reaching effects on the ecosystem in the long run. Trees are unique because they store carbon dioxide from the air. But when trees are cut down, that carbon is released. So, this increases greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.

Land-use change is also linked to surface warming. In particular, cutting down evergreen trees for agricultural land alters the state of the Earth’s energy balance⁶.This results in a higher surface temperature which further contributes to global warming⁷.

Moreover, soil erosion is also a critical impact. Almost half of the land’s topsoil is lost to this every year. This equates to around 0.03 tons of soil per year⁸. An exposed and dry topsoil with loose connectivity is more prone to cause future physical hazards.

Solutions

Much of the recent focus has been to slow down the negative impacts of deforestation. The most direct and quickest way involves completely stopping the practice.

An alternative is to switch to eco-forestry⁹. This involves cutting trees down less intensively¹⁰. For instance, only select trees are cut down and transported with as little damage to the area as possible.

Green businesses are a rising solution. They encourage recycling and reusing materials to produce products. They have recognised that daily life without the use of tree products is unrealistic¹¹. Therefore, for areas deforested for business purposes, they compensate the loss via replanting.

Afforestation can prevent desertification and reduce land degradation¹². This is because trees tend to maintain water and soil quality by reducing runoff and trapping sediments and nutrients¹³. Planting native species is important to avoid negative environmental consequence¹⁴.

Human action from the grassroots to the government level is also important. We can take small actions such as using less single-use items to donating to worldwide conservation programmes¹⁵. By working with organisations, we can look to educate ourselves and protect the Earth.

Of course, in order to drastically slow climate change, these solutions need to be used in line with decreasing fossil fuel usage, increasing renewable energy technologies and even down to an individual level. This could be done by decreasing usage of single-use plastics, walking and cycling more, and buying ecologically, locally sourced products.

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