2020 OCTOBER
DEFORESTATION & ILLEGAL LOGGING
UNDER THE PANDEMIC
Written by: Andrew Sia
Forests have been razed at an alarming rate across Asia, Africa, and Latin America in according to the environmental law enforcement. The loss of forests have increased by 77% using the average obtained from 2017 to 2019 in according to the data from Global Land Analysis and Discovery (GLAD)—a warning system for the loss of tree cover. Although their satellite detection cannot definitely be attributed to deforestation or logging, they are still the best global indicator of land change over time.
There is a sharp increase in deforestation in Africa and Asia in the first six months of the year. Data in Brazil showed an annual period from early August 2019 to end July 2020, an increase of 33% in forest clearing.
During the pandemic, income in part of the tropical countries has dropped, the villagers turned to logging for income. The collapse of the local economy has turned the people to turn to lands to find their need to survive. We found the situation in Africa where they cleared the trees for land to grow crops and to sell the wood for money. Same thing is happening in Indonesia where illegal logging is a problem.
For place as remote as Nepal in the Himalayas, during the lockdown the deforestation increased by 227%.
At this time of the pandemic, the Wildlife Conservation and WWF found the law enforcement’s mobility is grounded, and illegal logging is becoming hard to stop.
Knowing that deforestation will release large carbon emissions into the atmosphere and warms the globe. But this pandemic has increase the difficult to curb the emissions.