Food and fuel scarcity is rising high day-by-day. There is a vast gap between the demand and supply of these necessary products. We need an urgent balance to check the fast growing inflation. For that, more of farmlands are required to grow food crop and biofuels. But how do we get that? Obviously, forest is the only source one can think of. Deforestation seems to be the only solution left out to provide extra land areas.
A study conducted by Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) reports that by the year 2030, 551 million hectares of extra land would be required to cultivate more. But out of that we can arrange for only 200 hectares without cutting the forests. The planned deforestation is aimed to provide for food, biofuels and wood for paper, building and industry.
What we are producing at this rate is not sufficient to feed the rising population. If we go in this way, than the scarcity would be even greater at 2050. At present, we have about 1.4 billion hectares of farm land and about 3.4 billion hectares of pasture land. But the soil is also decreasing its quality and capacity to produce. In many areas, yields are falling as an effect of the climate change. Improved technology and genetic engineering may help, but not up to the desired extent.
Reformation of the land-ownership is of great importance in minimizing the deforestation. But that doesn’t seem to be so easy. Communities living in the tropical forest areas protect their environment to a large extent, and it’s only by protecting their rights, that we can save the nature. Very few countries like Brazil, Tanzania and Cameroon are successful in reformation of land-ownership.
Deforestation will certainly lead to extreme situation like global warming, Carbon emission and many such environmental crises. But we are bound to cut forests to meet the demand of rising population, or else problems would be unexpected. One can not make both the ends meet; where should we go then?
Source: bbc