Cause-Effect

Deforestation has been pinpointed as a serious environmental problem in Southeast Asia. What are the causes/circumstances that give rise to this problem?

Deforestation is the permanent destruction of indigenous forests and woodlands. Research shows that more than 80 % of the Earth’s natural forests already have been destroyed. Currently, 12 million hectares of forests are cleared annually. Obviously, these are the results from human activities. The major cause of deforestation is logging, despite of legal or illegal. Overpopulation that happen in most country in SE Asia has urged the conversion of forests to agricultural land to feed growing numbers of people. In Indonesia, people are still using fire to clear forest for that purpose and sometimes it cause conflagration that burnt a large scale of forest. Millions of hectares of forest were burnt in 1982-83, 1997-98 and 2002. Construction industry, furniture, paper and even chopsticks manufacturing industry demand a huge number of trunks, causing many forests had been categorized as timber plantation land. As many countries in SE Asia are still developing country, timber is an important resource of national income. Unfortunately, current efforts of recycling paper and re-plantation of tree not able to slow down the rate of deforestation. What make thing worse is people simply don't like to recycle!!