Deforestation In South America Essay

According to the United Nations ' Food and Agriculture Organization, an estimated 16 million acres of forest are being lost each year globally to deforestation (FAO 5). Contributing factors include agricultural expansion, logging, development, and other human activities. In order to put this into perspective, the World Wildlife Fund describes this as an equivalent to forty-eight football fields of forest being lost every minute (WWF 1). This is alarming, because even though for many of us, major forest systems seem as though they are distant world away from our everyday lives, they are actually critically essential to our very survival. Forest plays many roles such as keeping massive amounts of carbon in the ground and out of our atmosphere, …show more content…
However, in comparison to the rest of the world, it is still happening at alarmingly high rates. According to Niki De Sky, a scientist researching the continents deforestation “pasture is by far the prime driver of deforestation. And this is a South American phenomenon – In Southeast Asia and Africa, crop agriculture plays a much bigger role than they do here” (qtd, McGlennon 1). Pastures account for nearly eighty-two percent of deforestation throughout the continent. Other smaller scale deforestation can be attributed to logging and …show more content…
Except for South America, especially faces crisis in regards to their water supply because it is severely hampered by loss of the forest canopies and root systems. “When forests are replaced by pasture or crops, this water recycling process changes, leading to reduced atmospheric humidity and potentially suppressing precipitation", according to researchers from the University of Leeds and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (Spracklen 1). As water is not only a major energy source for South America, but the livelihood of their tropical forests ecosystems, such a change is especially dangerous for all of the