Amazon Rainforest Deforestation Essay

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Tropical forest is the habitat of more than half of the worlds’ approximately 10 million species of plants and animals. This shows how significant it is (to) the ecosystem. The rainforests once covered 14 percent of the Earth, but now they only cover about 6 percent of the Earth (Rainforest Statistics Facts, 2018). The statistics show how vulnerable rainforests are currently. Therefore, this essay will consider the causes and effects of the deforestation of the rainforests.

The massive deforestation occurred because of human population and development growth and agriculture activities undertaken by humans. After hundreds of decades, the population of the world has rapidly increased which raises the demand on human needs such as clothes, houses …show more content…

Despite the fact that agriculture is one of the biggest sources of income for a nation, the excessive forest clearing which is undertaken for cattle ranching have has demolished the rainforest. This is because of the method used, which is slash and burn technique (Stenstrup, 2009). Moreover, trees are cut down and burned to provide hardwood, land for agriculture and also for settlements (Pakenham, 2005). The agricultural activities have taken considerable areas of rainforests (Gillis, 1996 as cited in Golden and Miller, 1994) in the early nineties by almost 142,000 square kilometres per year the tropical rain forest shrank worldwide. While in Amazon’s rainforest, the scale of cattle ranching and soybean production for world markets are highly significant reason of deforestation occurred there (Rebecca, 2007). Therefore, the agriculture in every country should be reduced as it will also slow down the deforestation occurred.

The third cause of deforestation of rainforests is economic pressure. A country’s economy is not stable, if the government has many debts. The unpaid and large amounts of money have become a pressure. Many of the countries are categorised as poor country. Consequently, the government allows the citizen to do more deforestation in order to gain money. In order to get a short-term gain, humans cut the trees, as they desperately need money to pay the debts (McLeish,

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