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News flash: Did you know that the world’s largest pharmacy offers medicine for free? And that the world’s largest thermostat doesn’t come with an electric bill?
Now you might be thinking to yourself, “That’s jolly good news.” But what if I told you that this amazing mechanism of nature is rapidly being destroyed?
Deep in the heart of the Amazon or in Asia’s last remaining jungles lie the plants used in many modern medicines and possibly even a future cure for cancer.
The dense forest cover regulates global climate and the lush greenery acts as a filter to minimize the effects of pollutants. Rainforests are indeed the lungs of the world, providing us with the tools needed to maintain ecological balance. We rely on the rainforests much more than we think we do. So their rapid destruction should be of great concern.
Our world’s finite supply of tropical rainforests is being destroyed at a rate that is faster than you can imagine. Though the new millennium was supposed to usher in an awakened sense of environmental awareness in people, deforestation rates are increasing faster than ever. Everyday, rainforest lands the size of several football fields are cleared! This translates to precious forest lands the size of Panama being destroyed every year.
But just what is a tropical rainforest?
Strictly speaking, tropical rainforests are those found near the equator – on the continents of Asia, Africa, Central America and South America as well as those on the Pacific Islands. Compared to temperate rainforests, the tropical ones have a wet climate as they receive high amounts of rainfall a year.
However, tropical rainforests also face a unique danger of extinction. Here are some of the reasons why:
- Population numbers in the tropics are rapidly increasing, putting immense pressure on the finite resources of rainforests
- Rainforests are cleared to make room for urban developments
- Peasant farmers clear areas for their farms or grazing land using the ‘slash and burn’ technique.
- Loggers, most of them illegal, are indiscriminately chopping down timber without planting replacements.
Thus, the lush forests of Sri Lanka, India, Nigeria and most parts of Asia and Africa are gone. The forests of Latin America, including the precious Amazon, is rapidly following suit. The world’s largest rainforest is being cleared and denuded fast, to make room for human settlements, cattle ranching, livestock grazing, logging and gold mining.
What does the future hold for the fate of the rainforests?
At the rate that deforestation is going, the earth will be totally devoid of rainforests in the next one hundred years. Which could mean the hastening of the environmental dangers that we are all too aware of:
- Global warming could melt the polar ice caps causing tsunamis, super typhoons and mega-storms.
- The world’s deserts will expand faster than ever.
- Plant and animal species will disappear.
- Indigenous cultures can no longer survive.
The tropical rainforests could be gone faster than we imagine. It’s possible that they might not even be part of our children’s future at all.
Still, as an average American who has probably never been to a rainforest, there is always something you can do.
Whether it is carpooling, taking shorter showers or turning on fewer lights. We can all do something to alleviate the stress of Mother Earth. And who knows, tropical rainforests could have a bright future after all.
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