Deforestation and people


When forests are cut without effective planning and management, people living in and around them can be deprived of vital sources of food, medicine, building materials, fuel, and water.

Often people have to look for new ways to support themselves. Many are pushed into intensive agriculture. In the tropics, this frequently involves planting cleared land with crops such as maize, cassava, and plantains. Many tropical soils are thin and infertile and can only grow crops in this intensive fashion for a few years. Farmers are constantly forced to abandon cultivated land and clear more forest in an effort to survive.

In the developing world, deforestation particularly affects women, because they are almost always responsible for providing their families with food and fuel. Women living in the foothills of the Himalayas often spend a whole day collecting firewood to cook the evening meal. Their mothers used to collect the same amount in an hour. They also find it difficult - impossible even - to obtain clean water, because soil washes down from deforested hillsides and silts up streams and rivers.

As a result, many people cannot eke out a living in their traditional homelands and are forced to move to towns and cities. Many of these are so overpopulated that the migrants are unable to find work.

In northern Scandinavia, the lives of the nomadic Sami traditionally revolve around reindeer, which provide food and clothing. In the past, the reindeer spent the winters sheltering and eating lichens in the forests. Lichens only grow on old trees: as most of Scandinavia' s old - growth forests have now been replaced with young plantations, the reindeer sometimes starve. This has led to conflicts between the Sami and loggers.

But deforestation doesn' t only affect the lives of people who live nearby. If forests continue to disappear, supplies of game, fruit, nuts, and water dry up, and plant breeders will no longer be able to strengthen cultivated fruit trees with genes from their wild forest relatives. Picture of leaves
Drug companies in the developed world rely heavily on natural remedies found in forests. Researchers are currently studying chemicals taken from Australia' s blackbean tree to see if they can be used to help treat AIDS. Meanwhile, extracts from the bark of North AmericaÕs almost extinct Pacific yew, which grows in the shrinking temperate rainforests of the Pacific Northwest, are proving effective against cancer. As forests vanish, the world loses the chance to discover many more potentially life - saving drugs.




Copyright 1996, The World Wide Fund For Nature