In the world today, forests make up 31 percent of the area of land. Forests are extremely important to the environment, animal life, and human health. In addition to providing a vital source of oxygen, forests offer many endangered animals shelter and help supply medicine, food, and water to people. The significance of forests to humans and the ecosystem overall has caused the act of deforestation to become a highly contested and widely opposed operation.

The 31 percent of forests alive today are being chopped and sliced away to an even lower number as deforestation continues to consume the world’s forests. Each year, nearly 46-58 square miles of forests are destroyed. In order to enact change and stop the deforestation crisis it is necessary to look at the cause.

Though poverty may not be the sole cause of deforestation it most definitely plays a role in it. Much of the world’s rainforests are located in some of the poorest areas on the earth. That said, underdeveloped and poverty-stricken communities are naturally going to go where there is some means of subsistence. Thus, forests become one of the main sources of survival for many poor individuals but at the forest’s expense. Forests are being forcefully scoured and cut through by those who simply have no other means of survival. When a forest no longer has anything to offer, people move on to the next area and the cycle continues.

Despite the significant impact that poverty has on the world’s rainforests, it is only one part of the bigger picture. Much of the deforestation is caused by the need to create cropland and expand agricultural systems. The building of roads is also another factor that fits into the deforestation equation. In fact, a variety of causes have come to have a hand in deforestation. Nevertheless, providing poor communities with the resources they need would keep them from foraging the world’s rainforests and affecting the entire ecosystem.

Education is one approach that many are taking to help save the world’s rainforests. Scores of people remain ignorant to the growing issue of deforestation. Even worse, many citizens of the U.S. have no idea the impact that their consumer lifestyle has on tropical rainforests and, ultimately, the environment. Educating in areas close to forests will prove highly effective, because there are people who don’t understand how significant forests are to personal and global health.

Deforestation provides another example of how the effects of poverty have gone beyond itself and beyond the individual. Poverty is literally affecting the entire world, and that should be enough to get the entire world not only caring but racing to put an end to it.

– Chante Owens

Sources: Mongabay, NASA, World Wildlife
Photo: The Guardian