Environmental Problems: Deforestation

Deforestation has massive effects on the biosphere. It contributes to carbon emissions, changes in water cycles and biodiversity loss. The main cause of deforestation is the conversion of forested lands to agricultural lands.

Earthsight documented approximately 500 square kilometers (193 square miles) of deforestation to clear the way for new rubber and oil palm plantations in Central Africa’s rainforest countries over the past five years.

The air you breathe, the water you drink and the food you eat all rely on biodiversity, but right now it is in crisis – because of us. What does this mean for our future and can we stop it?

From the World Wildlife Fund: information about the causes of deforestation, impacts on species and places and projects to combat.

Deforestation is the permanent destruction of forests in order to make the land available for other uses. An estimated 18 million acres (7.3 million hectares) of forest, which is roughly the size of the country of Panama, are lost each year, according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Deforestation alters not only nearby ecosystems -- communities of interacting organisms and their environments -- but also the atmosphere on a global level, with devastating results.

Australia is in the midst of a full-blown land-clearing crisis. Projections suggest that in the two decades to 2030, 3m hectares of untouched forest will have been bulldozed in eastern Australia.

Posted 5 October 2017
Figures released on Thursday showed a 33% rise in clearing to almost 400,000 hectares in 2015-16, meaning Queensland now has two-thirds the annual rate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.

Updated 23 Feb 2018.
The RMIT ABC Fact Check site checks stories for their accuracy. See how this claim about Queensland's land clearing stacks up.