Deforestation: A threat to life on Earth

Forests are widely called as Earth's lungs, but rapid growth of human population has forced the lungs to reduce to half of its original size. Alarming rate of deforestation, if continued, will soon bring life to an end on the Earth

CJ: Dr. Ashiq Hussain, Bhalessa, Doda (Degree College Kishtwar)

Mon, Mar 30, 2009 16:22:20 IST

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Global Warming News :

'WHERE THERE are trees, there exists life', a well known quote to be remembered all the way by everyone. Human beings and forests have always have a complex relationship. It will not be wrong to quote here that plants and trees (forests) have played a key role to flourish life on this globe. Although the ocean was the original home of all life on Earth, forests, as they themselves evolved, quickly became home to a vast majority of land based creatures including early man.

Concrete jungles, factories spewing smoke, crowded roads crammed with traffic - certainly, humankind have come a long way from its humble beginnings. Plants themselves have been around for over 450 million years, starting with simple forms of single - layers of cells. But today they are among the most complex of life systems and also the oldest and most successful. Imagine that the first plants stood upright about 420 million years before the first animals could.

It is widely believed that early human species evolved in and around the African rainforests between four and six million years ago. Even today, our closest relatives, the great apes, live there. We have depended on forests as long as we have inhabited the planet - getting clean air to breathe, food and water from it, fuel, shade and shelter, and now we need it for economic gain as well.

A forest is home to many types of plants, which are the food source for many types of animals, which are, in their turn, also sources of food for other animals. And as these animals and plants die, they in turn become food sources for the plants that again become food sources for the animals. This circle of life, the linkages between all animals and all plants, is often referred to as 'the web of life' - a reference to the common dependencies between all life in an ecosystem.

It is incredibly difficult to sum up the importance of forests in a few words. Just think of how forests have affected your life today by just answering the following few questions. Have you had your breakfast? Read a newspaper? Switched on a light? Traveled to work in a bus or car? Signed a cheque? Made a shopping list? Got a parking ticket? Blown your nose into a tissue? All these and many more activities directly or indirectly involve forests. Some are easy to figure out - fruits, paper and wood come from trees; others are more difficult - by-products that lead to the manufacture of other everyday items like medicines, detergents, etc.

Looking at it beyond our narrow, human perspective, forests provide habitats to diverse animal species and they also form the source of livelihood for many different human settlements as well as for governments. They offer watershed protection also known as a catchment basin, the region of land that drains into a specified body of water, such as a river, lake, sea or ocean, timber and non-timber products and various recreational options. They prevent soil erosion, help in maintaining the water cycle, check global warming by using carbon dioxide in photosynthesis.

However, these forests, the greatest ever wealth bestowed by the Almighty God to the human on Earth, are being depleted at an alarming rates. The lungs of the planet are increasingly being likened to those of a compulsive smoker. Scientists, including the FAO, estimate that more than 50 per cent of the original forest cover has been lost since the beginning of the 20th century and what remains is disappearing at an alarming rate.

Deforestation had been the major culprit in the disappearing forest cover. However, in a study published in Nature in late 2004, researchers say that the forest is disappearing faster than we think, as logging and accidental fires - which were assumed to have minimal impact- are not taken into account in standard calculations. But the present estimates available have calculated that the logging practices and wild fires destroy as much or perhaps more annually than deforestation and this affect more communities than earlier estimates.

Thus today, the forest that gave us life is under severe threat. Early humans were hunter - gatherers, and later farmers, and because the population was small, the impact on the environment was minimal. But in the past couple of thousand years, the growing demands of an ever-increasing human population has halved the Earth's original forest cover.

Forests are the Earth's largest and most productive ecosystem and trees their most visible and important constituent. Humankind's past is linked to the forest and it is easy to see how its survival will map our future as well. It has been postulated that for ecological balance there should be at least 33 per cent forest cover on earth and if this and the percentage of deforestation in modern times is kept in mind, the last day of life on this globe is not so far.

Thus, to maintain the ecological balance and hence the possibility of sustenance of life further, it should be the duty of me, you and hence of all of us not only to save the forest but plant more and more trees. The need of the hour is to develop a positive attitude towards things and to put the best efforts into each and every little thing to save the forest and hence the mankind.

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