People generally don’t fully understand and appreciate what they have until it’s gone, and that is now becoming the case with forests in Latin America and the rest of the world. Before even getting into what deforestation is, what it’s doing to Latin America, and where it’s going, it’s important to go over what we get out of the forests (especially the Amazon Rain Forest) in Latin America and why it’s crucial to preserve and protect them. The forests of Latin America provide an extremely long list of products that are used in everyday life or are luxuries that people are drawn to. Some of these products include fruits / berries, nuts, gums, maple syrup, pulp (used in sponges especially), fibers, wood (for building materials or cooking), bark, dyes, tanning compounds / waxes, and so many other products that humans depend on. I personally have a major addiction to chewing gum and losing more and more of the gums found in forests would limit the supply of gum which would lead to price hikes for the limited supply which makes for one unhappy consumer, me. Ecosystem services provided are another crucial element of the forests. The biological diversity (especially in the Amazon Rain Forest) out there has so much potential to provide humans with new medicines and crop varieties that can only make us stronger and better. Forests help to maintain the local climates, have strong impacts on the amount of carbon dioxide and oxygen, and forests protect the topsoil and some of the essential nutrients. That’s a pretty broad overview of some of the important things and features that come out of the Latin American forests, now it’s important to understand the deforestation that is threatening all of this.

Deforestation is basically the long-term or permanent loss of forest due to human destruction (generally done on purpose). Many things are going on that are leading to this deforestation but the one doing a large chunk of the damage is human greed. As humans, we always want more resources, more land, and more money and all three of these can be found in a Latin American forest. Agriculture is expanding as is industry, logging, mining, cattle pastures and many more all for economic development, which really doesn’t sound all that bad on paper (especially with how poor the economy is in so many places in the world today). The problem is that people aren’t looking far enough into the consequences of their actions, which are losses in the products and services that were addressed and play an important role in humans’ lives. Chemicals are being used in the Amazon Rain Forest (the most biodiverse tropical rainforest) for plantation, and what these different pesticides and methods of irrigation are doing is harming the land where animals live (killing the animals), hampering the water balance, destroying other plants / trees, and leading to human life loss. The whole situation is ironic because you hear so many people stating that these forests are vitally important and yet these forests are still being exploited to an excessive amount in order for many people to get rich. When a lot of these people are rich (or get rich) they push the poor off their land and these peasants are forced to relocate to treed forest areas in which they must remove trees for their farming (it’s their only way of attaining food and some money). Here are a few alarming statistics that may make the average Joe comprehend the damage being done in Latin America: less than 10% of the original tropical rain forest in Mexico is left; Brazil has lost 90-95% of its Mata Atlantica forest; and deforestation of the Amazon Rain Forest is now moving twice as fast as scientists previously believed just a few years ago. There was also a prediction I stumbled across saying that by the year 2050 (if things continue at the rate they are going) there will be major reductions in water resources, new and current diseases will spread all across the world, pest and crop disease will rise, and plant and animal species will decrease dramatically. None of those things sound pleasant for humans forty years from now so it’s urgent that people are aware of the deforestation occurring in Latin America and the rest of the world. It’s easy to say “that’s awful what’s going” and then move on and keeping doing what your doing while the world loses vital resources. If Latin Americans can push their different countries governments into stricter policies / rules about deforestation then it may indeed be the key starting point needed to slow down and prevent the increasing deforestation that is slowing but surely destroying out world. It’s effort that will need to be made by many and not just a handful of avid supporters.

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