Amazon Deforestation Comes Roaring Back

Deforestation presents in an abundance of ways, including fires, clear-cutting for agriculture, ranching and development, unsustainable logging for timber, and degradation due to climate change. The foremost reason of deforestation in Latin America is the requirement for food, fuel, shelter, and foreign exchange. Year on year, a space of tropical forest the size of Great Britain is "converted" from an area equal to the size of Europe. Ever since 1950, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), half of the world 's forests have disappeared. “Latin America has lost 37 percent of its tropical forests,” says the FAO. As more and more of Latin American forest are degraded, more and more detrimental effects are being seen. Deforestation is changing a number of resources for tribal groups, altering their way of life, temperatures are increasing at a dangerous rate because of a buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, habitats and species such as plants and wildlife are being annexed due to the destructive effects of deforestation. Deforestation is inarguably helpful to supplying money to countries that sell the products from the forest, but huge wealth being generated from the forests comes with large-scale environmental and social costs. The local residences are not benefitting and the funds are being siphoned out of the region.

Brazil’s rainforests and America’s rainforests are great examples of the negative effect that deforestation has on these specific areas. One of the rising challenges in our rapidly growing world is the destruction of rainforests and how it is slowly ruining the world that we live in. Deforestation has a lot of destructive impacts on the environment that is surrounding us, one of the most important being its effect on the climate. The fast rise in the world’s population, calling for high demand of resources, is only hastening the effects of deforestation, which can hopefully be put an end to through the enforcement of a handful of simple, key, and sustainable solutions.

Deforestation has lead to terrible living conditions and 38 species have been driven to extinction. John Vidal, author of “The Sumatran Rainforest Will Mostly Disappear Within 20 Years,” writes about the ways logging companies are getting past regulations to take more land and logs away from the forest and natives. Ian Sample, author of “Amazon’s Doomed Species Set to Pay Deforestation’s ‘Extinction Debt,’” on the other hand mostly talks about the affects deforestation has on animals. Vidal has the better argument over Sample because his explanations about its effects on humans and corruption from companies and the government.

The Amazon Rainforest is a mighty jungle filled with an array of exotic species of wood, like mahogany, and rich natural resources such as gold, copper, tin, and nickel. Naturally, people want to make a profit, but the rainforest’s trees stand in the way. Logging is the main source of deforestation. Every year, millions of trees are cut down to be made into timber. Many times, these logging operations are illegal. These operations will keep exploiting the Amazon for its exotic timber, not caring that many of these species of plants are either rare, or help support rare species and ecosystems. Mining also creates deforestation, but not as severely as logging. Trees are cut down to make way for mining operations that dig for non renewable resources like copper and gold. Trees are also used as charcoal to help produce pig iron. A third cause of deforestation is agriculture. Cattle ranches and soy plantations are created where the Amazon Rainforest once stood. As people expand their farms, they must cut down the areas they now use for farming. Trees are also cut to make space for animal pens. Governments also contribute to the deforestation problem by building roads and creating infrastructure. Although these roads help with communication and navigation, they cut through the rainforest, and often help illegal loggers create new roads from their operations in the jungle to these roads that connect with civilization. All of these factors have helped cut down the Amazon Rainforest. In the past

The Amazon rainforest was first being cleared for crop and logging production, but after realizing the economic success of cattle ranching, cattle pastures became the leading reason for deforestation. Different sized ranches, mainly large, made up about 70% of the deforestation that was going on in the Amazon. According to the research done by, Philip Fearnside, “all of the profits made from beef cattle have been the only income source that made the deforestation in the Amazon profitable.” Though cattle ranching have made a major impact on the Amazon, the biggest impact of deforestation was caused by the building of the Transamazon Highway in 1970. The goal of this enormous highway was to connect Brazil with its neighboring countries in South America. This highway connects different plantations in Brazil and its neighboring countries by constructing trucking routes that make transporting crops easier. (Fearnside

Individuals have been deforesting the Earth for a large number of years, fundamentally to clear land for yields or domesticated animals. "Deforestation" is the lasting devastation of timberlands with a specific end goal to make the area accessible for different uses; what's more, as indicated by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization an expected 18 million sections of land of backwoods, which is generally the nation's extent of Panama, are lost every year; Although tropical woods are to a great extent bound to creating nations, they aren't simply meeting nearby or national needs; monetary globalization implies that the needs and needs of the worldwide populace are hunkering down on them also.

The world has changed a lot these past years. A lot of deforestation has occurred as humans increased their expectations for survival. This brings up a bigger issue as to over using resources and using things that we don’t need and turn them into waste. The key reason to this is to help humans grow and develop more.

On the surface, expanding agriculture into the rainforest seems to be a fast and simple way to alleviate hunger and malnutrition, but in reality, the resulting environmental damage--in addition to being intrinsically harmful--would actually worsen the hunger that the expansion is trying to solve. In 2014, Brazil was removed from the UN World Hunger Map, an accomplishment that Social Development Minister Tereza Campello credits to “a mix of public policies and an increased food supply” (“World Hunger Map”). Unsurprisingly, at least a significant portion of the “increased food supply” came from agricultural expansion in the Amazon Rainforest, which currently hosts approximately 200 million cows (“Cattle Ranching”). Unfortunately for Brazil, its accomplishment of ending famine within its borders may be soon reversed.

Agriculture and cattle ranching have been profitable for other parties that do not live off the land. Cattle ranching is the largest force of deforestation in the Amazon, which accounts for 80% of deforestation. Brazil has cleared up to 24 to 25 million hectares for the growth of soybean crops and is the second largest producer of soybeans. Cattle ranching and soy beans are linked together because when farmers expand to develop deeper into the forest, and abandon cattle pastures; they plant soy beans on the pasture to reuse the land. Deforestation started in the early 90’s because of the agriculture of soybeans and cattle ranches. In 1995 11,200 square miles of the Amazon Rainforest was cut down, which set a record for how much forest was cut down in the Amazon in a year. Deforestation went into a decline between the period of 2007 to 2012 because of the decline in prices of soybeans and beef. However, since 2012 soybeans price has increased rapidly by 29 percent by 2016. The market has been a driving force in deforestation because of the profit it holds for the farmers. Since the prices spiked, farmers have been clearing more land. Not only the

When the majority of the population is exposed to the words, “the Amazon”, through some form of written or spoken communications, most likely their initial, instinctive response is to visualize the Amazon rainforest as it is portrayed by a staggering amount of both past and present media outlets. This portrayal tends to be one consisting of a vibrantly colored rainforest, brimming with an abundance of diverse and exotic flora and fauna, and, a thriving and well-balanced collection of ecosystems which is, frankly, not even remotely accurate to the actual Amazon rainforest. Behind its deceptive facade endorsed by television, books, and occasionally even news, the Amazon rainforest occupies many dark truths relevant to degradation of the state of the earth’s various ecosystems and environments. Over the last several decades the Amazon has undergone numerous dramatic and, in fact, damaging changes all of which have been attributed to the area’s extensive deforestation.

Indigenous tribes are having their lands destroyed as a result of deforestation. In the Amazon, deforestation threatens 180 indigeous groups that depend on the rainforest (Visser). Water vapor, which is necessary for the water cycle to work, has decreased because of deforestation. Deforestation has caused a 4 percent decrease in water vapor flows from land (Bradford). A large part of the world’s diet comes from the rainforest which is at risk because of deforestation. Eighty percent of third world countries food intake comes from rainforests which puts their diet at risk (“Tropical Rainforest Destruction: Reasons and

The economic benefits of deforesting the Amazon are endless and with the nation of Brazil in control roughly 60 percent of the Amazon rainforest (Oswald 1), one can only imagine the economic prosperity it brings to the country. For instance, 65-75% of the land used after deforestation (Oswald 1) goes towards creating space cattle ranching which is big business in Brazil as Brazil is the largest exporter of cattle in the world. The exported volume of cattle achieved 264 822 tons in 2012, and generated USD 1.220,316 million in exports (Duran 1). This shows how Brazil has supported the world’s economy by being a leader in the exportation of cattle. Additionally, cattle ranching in Brazil has created many jobs within the country and has drastically improved the country 's economic state. The cattle beef industry generates about 360 000 direct jobs as well as thousands of jobs among inputs suppliers, moving almost USD 2 billion in domestic inputs (Duran 1). Clearly, cattle ranching is a vital industry for the well being of the Brazilian economy however, the short-term economic benefits of deforestation are more than offset by long-term impact to both the environment and the population of Brazil.

When small farms sell their land to large companies (or the corporation deforests their land as an illegal land claim), the equilibrium of the rainforest is thrown off balance. While natives have long been sustainably cultivating the land, large companies are concerned with quick profit. It is estimated that around 120,000 hectares of land have been deforested to make way for soy. Road are the most comprehensive indicator of frontier expansion and deforestation in the Amazon (Cesario

How would you like it if your home was being taken away and it has been for several years now?! This has been going on in the Amazon for several years now. It doesn't seem to stop, although it has decreased here and there, but eventually it goes back up again. “ Amazon deforestation refers to clearing the rainforest of trees and other growth by humans that has taken place since the latter half of the twentieth century. Amazon Deforestation. Great Neck Publishing. 2013.”

“The lungs of the Earth,” the Amazon rainforest is the largest tropical rainforest in the world and is home to a countless number of species (National Geographic, 2015). In 2013 the rate of deforestation in the Amazon rose by 29 percent and was largely observed in the states of Para and Mato Grosso in Brazil (Teixeira, 2014). The latest images taken by NASA’s satellite, Aqua reveals that multiple fires took place in these mentioned regions and were reported to have been intentional in order to clear land area (NASA, 2014). Earlier this year Sao Paulo faced severe draughts and the “drizzle city” was compared to a desert with 20 million settlers facing water cuts (Lean, 2015). Scientists believe the reason for this is the clearing