Deforestation Flashcards
How much of the deforestation is caused by farmers?
-94%of deforestation is caused by some form of farming in Amazon
This is brocken up by 60% cattle ranches, 33% subsistence agriculture, 1% large commercial agriculture
Judgment: too much
What type of farming is most destructive in different parts of the world?
Indonesia - 6 million hectares of palm oil plantations with plans to have 10mil by 2020 - with 50% of world species in the rainforest this could effect biodiversity and risk extinction if their is only 1 plant (disrupting food chains)
Brazil - cattle ranches are used to pay off dept - This has massive effects on climate change as a vital part of green house gas consumption is being taken and replaced by a methane (which has 21x the green house effect of co2) producer.
Judgment: bad for climate / biodiversity
Why are the farmers doing this?
Farmers can be split into subsistence and cash crops. The main reason subsistence farmers are farming is for their family to be able to eat - they mainly slash and burn. As the worlds population is increasing and 95% of this growth is in developing countries. These countries have 95% of the tropical rainforest. This increases the amount of subsistence farmers as well as demand from consumers. Not to blame because they do this for survival unlike cash croppers.
As population growth increases the amount of consumers increases. This leads to more cash crop farming to make profit - they mainly use ranches and plantations. This farming is supported by the government as it increases global influence and some of the money will be used to pay off the countries depts. This type of farming causes local farmers to join the corporations or be move - this means may work on uncertified farms.
Judgment: not subsitence farmer fault but cash crop
What other factors are to blame?
Increase in population pressure means increase in need for money and energy from the government and exploiting the rain forest for money is a simple way to give this - keep up with development. Amazonia: logging means forest is cut down for money and Carajas: The rainforest has had to be cut down to access the resources - 3000 people working in trucks the size of houses. Both effect climate change and biodiversity - both move from place to place which similar to slash and burn is to damaging on a large scale.
Also Amazonia: economic developing, hydroelectric damns flooded 1750km2, $6billion. This is Good for climate change but bad for biodiversity.
Judgment: bad for climate / biodiversity
Conclusion:
How much of a role farmers play on the rain forest depends on the place however it is clear in every country farmers play some role. The cattle ranch in Amazonia plays a massive part (60% total deforestation) in showing how damaging farming is and if farming in the rainforest is not slowed down we will loose the rain forest. However the factor that is most damaging is global population growth as 148 people are added to the world’s population each minute that is 148 more mouths to give beef, ores, electricity, wood, plan oil ect. That is the root of the problem and with less of it less of all the items listed before are needed.
