Deforestation (clearing a wide area of trees) is one of the biggest issues in climate change. It can involve cutting down trees to make the area into something else. (Wikipedia) Some of the causes of deforestation are food, firewood, mineral extraction, and unsustainable farming practices. Trees help take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and exchange it for oxygen. (conservation.org)
According to satellite data, tropical forests are being destroyed at a rate of about 8 million hectares (31,000 square miles) a year – an area similar in size to the state of South Carolina. More than one million rural people need forests. The rate of deforestation is the same as the loss of 20 football fields every single minute. It’s estimated that within 100 years there will be no more rainforests. There are more than 121 natural remedies in the rainforest which can be used as medicines. (conversation.org)
Some of the companies that support deforestation are McDonalds, Swiss Fragrance, and L'Oreal Paris. McDonalds is a fast-food restaurant, Swiss Fragrance is a flavor and fragrance company, and L’Oreal Paris is a beauty product company. They use a lot of palm oil. Palm oil comes from an African palm tree, but it also comes from Asia, North America, and South America. Palm oil is bad for the earth because people burn rainforests down to grow palm oil. Palm oil is in a lot of things like chocolate, ice cream, biscuits, and cleaning supplies. Some companies that use palm oil are General Mills, Hershey, Kellogg’s, Kraft Heinz, L’Oreal, and Mars.
Donating to charities is a very good way to help with this problem, one of the many being “Amazon watch.” It is an organization that doesn't make money for itself. It was obviously made to protect the Amazon rainforest and help the indigenous people of the Amazon basin. amazonwatch.org
Last Friday, two members of our deforestation group planted an oak tree. I was one of them. We were excited because, after all our research on deforestation, we were finally going to take action and plant a tree. We went into the oak grove at our school. There were a few saplings and some people had already dug holes to plant their trees. The teacher we were with asked us if we wanted to dig our own hole or use someone else's. We dug our own hole. After what Greta has done and is still doing, digging a hole didn’t seem like that much work.
Why do we need forests? We need forests because forests provide things like fuel, carbon storage, water supply, paper, soil protection, flood reduction, medicines, food, and biodiversity. We need food and water to survive. We need flood reduction because floods destroy the land. We need medicines from the forest because many human diseases are treated with drugs, and it is healthier to use natural remedies. We need fuel because a lot of people depend on it – it is what we use to get around. We need carbon storage for air; trees breathe in carbon and let out oxygen. We need paper for writing, drawing, and printing. It is bad because we need to cut down trees. Forests protect the soil, too.
Some of the things you can do to help prevent deforestation are boycotting some of the companies that use palm oil and planting trees to make up for the number of forests being cut down. You could eat vegetarian meals as normally as possible and try to recycle and buy recycled products as much as you can. Have you ever seen one of those tiny digits on your plastic wrappers or bottles? These tiny digits are actually pretty important because it's an identification. They are used to sort recycled products. The numbers are 1-7.
