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Carbon Emissions | February 11, 2010 |
Growth of World’s Cities, Global Trade are Driving Deforestation
The rapid expansion of the world’s urban populations and globalized trade — not the growth of small-scale farming in rural areas — have emerged as the primary forces driving tropical deforestation worldwide, according to a new study. In the late 20th century, researchers tied the clearing of the world’s forests to the growth of rural populations and the related building of infrastructure and roadways. But with more people moving to cities in recent years, large industrial farms have expanded into forested areas to meet the demand from surging agricultural markets, according to the study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience. “One line of thinking was that concentrating people in cities would leave a lot more room for nature,” said Ruth DeFries, lead author of the study and professor at Columbia University’s Earth Institute. “But those people in cities and the rest of the world need to be fed. That creates a demand for industrial-scale clearing.” The researchers analyzed population and economic trends from 41 nations across Latin America, Africa, and Asia from 2000 to 2005, as well as remote-sensing images of forest cover from the same period. They found that the greatest forest losses were associated with urban growth and increases in agricultural exports.
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Comments By Readers
I have to say that I disagree to a point. Not only urbanization is destroying the forests, yet, it is clear that it is a large part. I think that just people in general are, not just the urban society. If people realized that it takes so much more time and energy to re-grow a forest than to destroy it, I don’t think it would happen as often. They don’t see how important forests are to the environment, and that they basically keep us living. Maybe a possible solution to this would be to limit the amount of large urban run farms? As for Asia, Africa, and Latin America, they are having rapid population growth so it would make sense that they are linking population growth with deforestation there because when every parent has six or seven children on average there won’t be enough land as it is, the children, once their grown, will need a place to settle and to have a home so the amount of space needed will grow as well. We all need to realize that although the demand for agricultural goods is high, there are other alternatives to having the farms needed to make and grow the goods, and we don’t need to ruin all the forests we have left from being destroyed due to these demands.
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