Saving the Rainforests for Future Generations

Saving the Rainforests for Future Generations
Rainforests are being cut and burned form Brazil to Indonesia at such a rate that they could well disappear from the earth's surface before the year 2050. They are being cleared for valuable timber and other resources to speed up the economic growth of the nations in which they are located. The most recent figures show that the area of rainforest destroyed last year alone was bigger than the size of Great Britain and Ireland.
If the present rate of deforestation is allowed to continue, the consequences for the earth will be great. We shall see a massive upsetting of ecosystems, very large increases in soil erosion, increases in flooding and in drought, changes in rainfall patterns and regional, quite possibly global, changes in climate. We shall also probably lose many rare plant and animal species.
According to many scientists, the burning of rainforests is also directly contributing to the so-called greenhouse effect. This effect, they say, is raising average temperatures and sea levels as the polar ice caps recede.
The rainforest is essential in other areas also. It is a medicine chest of unlimited potential. The US National Cancer Institute has identified 2,000 rainforest plants which could be beneficial in fighting cancer. In today's pharmaceutical market, 15 of the 125 drugs derived from plants were discovered in the rainforest.
Plant species are not the only forms of life threatened with extinction in the rainforest. Rare birds and animals that cannot be found anywhere else in the world have been disappearing at the rate of one a year since the turn of the century.
In the face of all these facts, it seems senseless for countries to continue destroying their rainforests. However, the problem is not so simple. The countries in which the rainforests are located are all quite poor and overpopulated. One of them, Brazil, has a population of 140 million, about half of whom are living in absolute poverty. The governments in these countries are usually also too weak to stop large companies and powerful individuals from destroying the rainforests. They have no money, so when the poor whom they cannot feed find work cutting down trees or burning forestland, the governments often have no choice but to turn a blind eye. Moreover, for many of these countries, the valuable timber and other resources found in the rainforests are also a very important source of foreign exchange, which they badly need to pay off their foreign debts and purchase foreign equipment and other goods.
The only solution to the problem, then, seems to be for the richer countries of the world to help the countries where the rainforests are located. One way they could help would be by cancelling the international debts that countries like Brazil owe, while also working together with these countries to solve their other economic problems. At the same time, they could support programmes to teach the local people to regard the rainforests as gardens to be harvested, and not merely as places where the only way for them to make a living is by senselessly cutting down trees and burning.
Such programmes could teach the local people how to select trees worth exporting and to cut only those trees down while leaving the rest, so that the basic make-up of the forest would not be disturbed. This would also mean that the environment needed for the survival of the many rare species of animals and plants, as well as of the Indian tribes that live in the rainforest, could be preserved. The local people could also be taught to earn more money by cutting the selected trees and making them into furniture on the spot. In addition, they could learn how to harvest other valuable natural materials that are now being wasted, and sell them overseas to earn foreign exchange for their countries.
Last but not least, people in the richer countries of the world could also help save the rainforests by using wood-derived products such as paper more carefully and by recycling used paper products to help reduce the demand for newly cut wood.