index > Today's Earth, Our Future > 2. Gifts from the forests > Protecting Our Forests

Protecting Our Forests

Did you know that our forests are shrinking? The main reason for this is because people cut down trees. Why do people cut them down?
There are two reasons:
They want to use the wood from the trees they cut, or they want to use the land where the trees are growing.

The second reason--that people want to use the land--is especially the case in developing countries where the population keeps getting higher and higher. Why do you think they want to use the land?

The greater the population is, the stronger the need for more houses and food for people. In order to produce more food, more land is needed for farming and for raising farm animals. That is why in developing countries with growing population, people continue to cut down trees in the forests.

But if we go on like this, our forests will disappear. In some parts of the world, people are trying to protect the forests by figuring out ways to make a living without cutting down the trees. For example, they farm on forest land without cutting the trees down. In actuality, however, without stopping the population from growing, there is no easy solution to this problem.

Now, let's consider the first reason why people cut down trees--to use the wood from the trees they cut.

On a global scale, a little more than a half of the wood that is cut is used as fuel. There are many people in developing countries that have no access to either electricity or gas. They burn wood or charcoal for cooking and heating their homes.

The other half of the wood that is cut is used as columns and wood panels for buildings and to make other wooden products, like furniture and toys, and also to use as pulp to make paper.

Since the population has grown in the developing countries, more and more trees have been cut down for fuel. But what is increasing at an even more extreme rate is the amount of wood used for industrial purposes. For example, we use three times as much paper as we did 30 years ago, which means that we need three times more pulp to make the paper.

Furniture and paper made from wood are mostly used in the developed countries for our comfort and convenience. The amount of trees it takes for one person to live in a developed country is twelve times more than people living in developing countries.

How can we protect our forests? In developing countries where people need wood for heating and cooking, we should think of ways to cook and heat with as little wood as possible. There are technologies that have already been developed for cooking equipment such as efficient ovens that use less firewood for heating and cooking, or solar stoves that use heat from the sun.

And in developed countries where a lot of trees are used as wood material and paper, an effort should be made to reduce the amount that we use. Let's only use wood and paper when we really need it, and even then, let's be careful to use only as much as we need.

Every now and then, it's good to stop and think, "What forest did the wood for these pencils or the pulp for this toilet paper come from? Was another tree planted after the tree was cut?"

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