Global warming is an aspect of climate change, which refers to the phenomenon of the gradual heating of the Earth’s surface due to increasing temperatures.
The consensus that humans are causing recent global warming is shared by 90%–100% of publishing climate scientists according to a 2016 study. They overwhelmingly agreed that global warming and climate change is mostly caused by human activities. According to NASA’s Earth observatory; Tropical deforestation is one of the dominant causes that are unbalancing the stability of the planet’s climate and contributing to global warming.
What is Tropical Deforestation?
Deforestation refers to the thinning, clearing, or decreasing of forest areas and trees through natural causes and human activities. While natural causes, such as floods and hurricanes can result in deforestation.
Our salvaged wood order under flood
The main causes of global deforestation primarily point to various human activities, including:
o Agricultural expansion
o Timber extraction
o Dam construction
o Mining, etc.
How Do Tropical Deforestation and Tree Cutting Affect Climate & Environment?
Before understanding how deforestation plays for global warming and climate change, let’s refresh our global warming definition. Global warming is caused by the increased global emissions of greenhouse gases, toxic pollutants, and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. These gases and pollutants trap solar radiation and heat, causing the plant’s surface to get hotter and contributing to global warming.
Infographic source: Model Forest Policy Program
Forests and trees make up about 31 percent of Earth’s land surface. They create oxygen and absorb odours, inorganic airborne nitrogen molecules, and greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide. The mass destruction, cutting, and removal of trees and forest areas lead to the imbalance of this cycle, releasing pollutant gases into the atmosphere and encouraging global warming.
What Do Study and Research Say?
It is estimated that more than 1.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide are released to the atmosphere due to deforestation, over the period 1990-2010. As of now, global tropical deforestation, attributable to human activities, contributes 20 to 30 percent of CO2 emissions.
Impact of Tropical Deforestation on Global Warming & Climate Change:
Clearance of trees and tropical forests can result in the loss of habitat for over 70 percent of animal species and plants inhabiting forests.
Tropical deforestation disrupts the cycle of evaporation and rainfall. This could turn the rainforest areas, like the Amazon rainforest, hot and drier, disrupting the water cycle and progressing global warming fast.
Infographic source: World Ressources Institute
The forests and trees act as a rainfall sponge, in which their soils and root structures soak up rainwater brought by tropical storms.
Tropical deforestation can lead to not only flooding but also soil erosion and degradation.
The continuous actions of tree cutting gravely endanger the survival of various species necessary to achieve forest regeneration. This can trigger a forest to lose its capacity to regenerate and maintain the ecosystem.
In Indonesia, the main cause of deforestation is the culture of palm oil. On top of solely producing decking and flooring with reclaimed wood from disused structures as per our strict responsible sourcing policy, we also donate to a Kalimantan-based NGO to replant trees as part of our CSR efforts.
