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Chapter 9
Deforestation
Introduction and Definition
Deforestation is the removal or damage of vegetation in a forest to the extent that it no longer
supports its natural flora and fauna. It is most frequently caused by humans taking care of
immediate needs while not being aware of the long-term effects of their actions. Deforestation
is a slow-onset disaster that may contribute to other, cataclysmic disasters. It reaches
catastrophic proportions after large areas of vegetation in a forest are damaged or removed. By
changing an area’s natural flora and fauna, it removes the land’s protective and regenerative
properties.
The rapid rate of deforestation in the tropics is a key driving force in the yearly increase of flood
disasters. According to a Food and Agriculture Organization and United Nations Environmental
Program (FAO/UNEP) study in 1981, tropical forests are disappearing at the rate of 7.3 million
hectares (18 million acres) per year:
• 4.2 million hectares (10.4 million acres) a year in Latin America
• 1.8 million hectares (4.4 million acres) a year in Asia
• 1.3 million hectares (3.2 million acres) a year in Africa. 1
Historical Examples
Deforestation in Africa
In Africa, for example, 2.3 million hectares of open woodlands are cleared each year, and the
vegetation of other vast areas of woodlands is declining with severe consequences for land and
people. Also, the survival of extensive forests in one region provides little comfort to residents
of areas experiencing wholesale forest destruction. The dense forests of West Africa and a few
other areas in the continent (especially Madagascar, Rwanda, and Burundi) are disappearing
fast, while rain forests in parts of Central Africa are little touched as yet. The Ivory Coast has
lost 70 percent of the forest with which it began the twentieth century; there and in Nigeria some
10 percent of the accessible forest was cleared each year in the second half of the 1970s. The
U.N. assessment of Africa concludes: “In the long run there is a real ecological threat to the
whole continent.”
Deforestation in Asia
The formerly dominant timber exporters of Southeast Asia are fast approaching their days of
reckoning for past forestry exploitation. In late 1977, while pressing for the adoption of a new
forestry policy, the deputy premier of Malaysia shocked his compatriots by projecting that
peninsular Malaysia’s once-lush forests would be severely depleted in just 12 years. He
predicted that by 1990 the rate of timber production would not be adequate to meet domestic,
let alone foreign, demand. Stringent new logging controls are being imposed in Thailand
following the National Forestry Department’s estimate that the country’s forests will be virtually
gone in 25 years if present logging and farming practices continue. Thailand has a special
problem with poachers of valuable tropical hardwoods; in some recent years 30 or more forest
guards have been killed in gun battles.