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Rainforest Destruction: Its Effect On Global Climate Change

By: David Craythorne

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Spread over Africa, South America and Australasia, rainforests are the richest repositories of life forms on planet earth and its green lungs. One of our oldest ecosystems, rainforests are estimated to give refuge to 66% of all the species on earth! Today however many of the estimated 30-40 million species inhabiting these ecosystems are being lost, even before they can be catalogued, at a rate estimated at an astonishing 50,000 species per year.

Not only are rainforests a considerable repository of potential medicines they also play a fundamental role in producing oxygen and in maintaining worldwide climatic patterns. The Amazon rainforests alone for instance are responsible for 28% of the global oxygen turnover.

The role of green house gases like methane and carbon dioxide in global warming and climate change is well documented. Cars, ocean liners and aircrafts have been severely criticized for belching these gases that threaten to bring doomsday to the earth's doorstep. What is little understood and valued is the fact that rainforest destruction releases more than 1.5 billion tons of green house gases (IPCC estimates), one fifth of the overall global emissions and more than all the other sources mentioned above put together (Houghton, 2003; BBC report). Destruction of an acre of rainforest releases a thousand tons or more of carbon dioxide (http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/06/16/australia-forest-carbon.html).

The significance of conserving rainforests consequently becomes clear. Detractors have long hidden behind Odum's view propounded in the 60's that old rainforests do not help in trapping carbon dioxide. However a 2008 study has revealed that these old forests continue to trap close to a billion tons of carbon dioxide every year. (Luyssaert et al., "Old-growth forests as global carbon sink," Nature, 2008).

Rainforests have been at the receiving end of mans' greed and short sighted harvesting. Unchecked rainforest destruction has shrunk rainforests to 50% of their earlier size, limiting them to a mere 6% of the earth's surface. Estimates of the extent of rainforests lost vary from 17 million acres (United Nations estimate) to 50 million acres every year. The WWF puts destruction rates at 25 to 50 acres every minute. To put in perspective, an area of tropical forest large enough to cover North Carolina is deforested each year. Today rainforests are being lost in Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Zaire, Guinea and many other countries. Some projections suggest that the remaining rainforests could be lost inside the next 4 decades.

Aspirations of economic growth in third world countries and lifestyle choices in the developed world are the twin driving force behind deforestation in poorer Latin American, Asian and African countries. Livestock grazing to meet the increasing requirement for beef is alone responsible for a large part of deforestation. Close to 55 square feet of rainforests are cleared for every pound of beef produced releasing 500 pounds of carbon dioxide in the process (The burger that ate a rain forest - London Times, Feb 26, 1989). Forest land converted to pasture also contributes to global warming by increased emissions of methane by cattle.

In Brazil alone 24,000 square kilometers of rainforests are cleared every year (Santilli et al., Climatic Change; 2005). Besides pasture, rainforests have been cleared for timber - with concessions sold as cheap as $ 2 per acre, cropland, biofuel cultivation, to feed iron mills with charcoal and paper factories with wood pulp. A single multinational pulp manufacturing scheme in Brazil consumes close to 2000 tons of pristine rainforest every day! International debt repayment obligations have also been instrumental in encouraging many nations to hawk their forest resources for hard cash in place of higher returns they could have realized in the longer term by sustainable forest management practices.

Article Source: http://depositarticles.com/

For more information on the tragic conseqences of rainforest destruction and how deforestation has a negative impact on the earth's climate, please visit www.rainforestfoundationuk.org

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