Did you know in 2018 alone, we lost a handful of hectares of pristine forests? This is according to the satellite analysis done concerning palm oil, chocolate and beef. These were all identified as the primary causes for the loss.
The forests came with carbon in huge amounts and a unique wildlife combinations. Their protection plays a huge role in the campaigns against climate change and all its adverse effects on human life. When we work on saving the forest, we are actually working on saving wildlife from further mass extinction. However, it seems that despite numerous calls to be more responsible, deforestation remains to be a rampant problem not only in the Uk but all over the world.
Although the reports show that the losses recorded in 2018 were much less than those recorded in 2016 and 2017, the record on dry conditions that led to huge forest fires have been the worst next to the records in 2012, when a recording of such began. These facts are definitely alarming and should be a cause of concerns by governments around the world.
Ivory Coast and Ghana have the highest records of forest destruction and these are mainly due to cocoa farming and gold mining. "The world is nowhere near winning the battle to save the forests," said Frances Seymour, speaker from the World Resources Institute. They are part of the huge network called the Global Forest Watch (GFW) which produced the results of the research.
"It may be tempting to celebrate on a milestone that there are less forests destroyed this year after years of campaigning, but the analysis shows that the conditions are still getting worse. If we look back in the records of the last 18 years, the decline in the number of rainforests in the world are still upwards," he added.
The study conducted covers tree losses as its major concern, but it focused primarily on forests the trees that have been lost there. These are the forests with the most amount of carbon stored along with the highest number of wildlife population. Sadly, the destruction of such forests are considered highly irreversible, even decades of efforts to rebuild them.
Mikaela Weisse, a manager at GFW said that they too were surprised of the data they collected. "We saw invasions in indigenous lands, even those that have been left immune from deforestation for years," she added.
Seymour added that such tragedies were brought about by human consumptions and that the problem just won't stop because people keep asking for more. "Behind all these bar graphs and numbers are the real losses. The loss of a forest has become all to familiar that it can be associated with that of a funeral."
