How to Stop Deforestation?  
by Jean Simmer

Deforestation has rapidly destroyed much of the planet's forests for years. One major challenge for governments and environmentalists alike would be how to stop deforestation so current environmental conditions would not come to worse.

In the past centuries, people have been naturally cutting down trees and burning down forests. Take note that hundreds of years ago, most of the earth's land surface had been covered by forests.

So to be able to construct residential areas and establish villages, people had to destroy some forests. As population grew through the years, there are much development that needs to be achieved.

Poverty and over population had rapidly caused alarms to governments around the world. People in the past decades had been troubled at how they could generate earnings to feed themselves and their children.

Agriculture once was the principal source of families' incomes. But people grew impatient. Until the middle of the 20th century, people had readily embraced industrialization, which was touted as the easy way out to poverty, employment and slow production.

Surely, development was spurred, jobs were created, new industries emerged. But something had to give in. In exchange to the fast budding of factories and different industries, forests were depleted.

Since the Industrialization revolution, the total forest covers of the earth has drastically lessened. Biodiversities were affected, and overall climate changes and environmental denudation were spurred.

It is now time to slow down or eliminate deforestation. Stopping deforestation would be easy if people would just cooperate with one another in that single initiative.

Stopping deforestation

Indeed, environmentalists and forestry advocates have been reminding people and governments to immediately act on the problem regarding continued deforestation practices all around the world.

Deforestation could be slowly stopped if people would be more environmentally conscious. That means, to accelerate efforts in stopping deforestation, initiatives have to be started by you.

As a suggestion, the significant contribution you could do is to help curtail the demand for products that are reliant on deforestation. It does not necessarily mean that you would boycott products.

It means that you could start by advocating and participating in recycling programs. Paper is made from barks of trees that are in turn, mostly coming from forests. Did you know that you could recycle paper?

There are industries that are focused at recycling paper. Old and used paper would just be processed and turned into new paper products. If the practice becomes wide-scaled, the number of trees that has to be cut down would be reduced.

Stopping deforestation practices

Governments around the world should also start implementing legislations that would effectively prevent the continued practice of deforestation. Sanctions should be given to violating parties. That way, there would be less people and companies that would engage in slash and burn practices.

Rain and dry forests should be protected by governments. They can be declared national properties, so no businesses can ever touch them. They can also be turned into national parks; thus, the overall state of these forests could be effectively preserved.

Reforestation

Reforestation is the opposite of deforestation. If deforestation can be considered wounding of nature, reforestation is the sought-after healing process. In reforestation, forests are replanted with trees. In years, the forests would be much alive again.

Since the practice of deforestation in some cases could not be avoided, it can be regulated so as not to create negative impact to the environment and to biodiversity.

Deforestation could be slowed down. To do this, trees could be cut at slower rates. For each cut tree, a new one should be replanted. By that, logging activities would not be entirely scrapped, and at the same time, forests are renewed.

People should also stop denuding mountains and forests so they could establish new villages or use the land for other purposes. There are special cropping techniques that would enable planting of crops within forests. The concept of intercropping is not very familiar, but would be of great help to anti-deforestation initiatives if taken seriously.

If people do not act immediately to curb deforestation for good, experts estimate that in 30 years time from now, the earth's surface would be left naked, without forests.

Catastrophic changes would be felt through harsh weather conditions, flash floods and landslides. The earth's geographic surface could also be altered due to adverse weathering caused by climate changes and the absence of natural soil protection.

Help stop deforestation now before it becomes too late.

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