







People have been deforesting the Earth for thousands of years. Tropical forests are harvested mainly in developing countries. The products provided by harvesting those forests are for both local and global needs. Due to the globalization, the needs or demands from the global population are weighing down on those tropical forests. Those needs and demands are anticipated to increase in the future.

Here I would like to introduce 6 causes of deforestation. Rarely is there a single direct cause for deforestation. However, they are simply from humans need to survive.

Underlying Causes

1. Lack of Technology

If humans had a technology that could compensate for the demand for wood or land, people would not have to cut down the forests. For example, if people could build housing without using wood products for a reasonable economic and environmental cost, people do not have to cut down the forests. Sales of newspaper are dwindling owing to the spread of internet in the world. Encyclopedia Britannica stopped making the printed edition in 2010 after publishing it since 1768 because of Wikipedia. If humans could invent some new technology that does not need deforestation in order to make up with human needs met by clearing forests, we wouldn’t have to destroy forests.

2. Population Increase

Human needs of food or land or forest products expand along with population increases. Figure 1 below illustrates that as world population has increased from 1990 to 2015, global forest area has decreased. Figure 1 was made with the data from United Nations. The left axis represents the forest area in the world and the right axis shows the number of global population.

Figure 1A shows a forecast of global population done by United Nations. It’s expected to increase to approximately 11 billion people in 2100 from about 7 billion people in 2015.

Direct Causes

The direct causes below are derived from human needs.

3. Agricultural Expansion

The conversion of forests to cropland, mostly for subsistence, is a significant cause of tropical deforestation. The increase in global demand for commodities such as palm oil or soybeans seems to be driving industrial-scale producers to clear forests at a rapid rate.

The picture below shows a deforestation site to make a palm oil plantation in Indonesia in 2007. A wide range of areas were converted to palm oil plantations.

Figure 2 below shows top 10 countries reporting the greatest annual net loss of forest area from 2010 to 2015. Indonesia is ranked as No. 2 in the world.

4. Cattle Ranching

Cattle ranching is one of the most significant causes of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. In Brazil, this has been the case since at least the 1970s. Most of the beef is destined for domestic markets in Brazil, but a large amount of Brazilian beef is exported to other countries as well. Brazil, a leading exporter of beef in the world, exported about 1,850,000 MT CWE in 2016, which accounted for 20% of global beef export. A strong global demand for beef is expanding this kind of deforestation and Brazilian governments supports the cattle ranch businesses. Brazil has the most annual net loss of forest area from 2010 to 2015 (Figure 2).

Also, when you look at the deforestation in the world by income category, forest area decreased mainly in the middle and low income countries. Figure 3 represents that annual forest area change by income category from 1990 to 2015. You can see the most of deforestation occurred in the countries with middle income and low incomes. Most countries including Brazil and Indonesia in Figure 2, except Argentina, are included in the middle and low income countries.

5. Logging

Logging to produce forest products, including illegal logging, is a driver of deforestation.

Forests in the United States are considered as sustainably managed forests largely, at least forests in the US are believed to be managed better than forests in other countries such as Brazil or Indonesia. For example, there are environmental laws that force forest companies to replant trees after they harvest their trees in the US. However, there are countries like Indonesia where enforcement of such environmental laws are weak and forests are illegally logged because of rising demand for timber, paper and derivative products in other countries.

After the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the Japanese government stopped all the nuclear power plants and promoted renewable energies to make up with the nuclear energies. One of the renewable energy sources is biomass power and many biomass power plants were built since the earthquake. The Japanese government has been promoting to use domestic species, Japanese cedar, for wood usage by providing several forest-related industries with a large amount of subsidies.

Now as a result, many forests are harvested due to the increased demand for wood biomass. Many of those areas have not been replanted. You can see many bare lands in the Japanese mountains. It is necessary to make an environmental law in Japan that requires replanting trees after harvesting forests if Japan wants to maintain healthy, sustainable forest.

6. Land Development

Land development, like building commercial architectures and infrastructure expansion, such as road building is reducing forests. The picture below shows an example of forests being harvested to make way for home development. As the population increases, people need more land for living or commercial buildings and infrastructures.







