“Tropical deforestation is responsible for
about 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions - more than all the cars, trucks,
planes, boats and trains in the world combined.” (greenpeace organization) Now,
over 75% of the forests in Thailand are gone because of deforestation. (wrm
organization) This is a major
environmental problem in Thailand. Deforestation is removing or cutting down
forest area. There are many cause of deforestation. People cut down trees for
industry and space for farming and living. Wood industries are growing
continuously in Thailand. Deforestation can cause natural disaster such as
flood. It also affects wild life. We should find a way to stop deforestation or
we will be facing disaster.
Deforestation causes many environmental
problems in Thailand including air pollution and natural disasters. It is one
of the causes of the global warming. In the atmosphere, there are gases such as
methane,
chlorofluorocarbons, nitrous oxide, and ozone which help to
control the heat loss to the space. Having too much of these gases will keep
the heat in the Earth. Trees can help to absorb these gases. Trees can absorb
carbon dioxide and replace it with oxygen. They also help to absorb pollution
in the air. The water cycle is also affected by the deforestation. Trees absorb
the water under the ground and release it to the air which produces atmospheric
moisture. So if there are no trees the water in the soil will not be adsorb up
which causes flood and landslide. As you can see, Thailand is facing with flood
every year. Flood destroy people’s house and effect the economic. Tropical
rainforests also produce about 30% of fresh water on earth. (coolearth organization)
Insects and other wild animals are affected from deforestation. They have no
places where they can live.
There are
many causes of deforestation in Thailand. The major cause is the growth of
population. As population increase the demand for food is also increase. The
forest needed to be cut down for people to find space for farming. Also, people
will need more space for living. So the forest is replaced with people’s house.
Another cause of deforestation is the wood industry is growing very fast. The
demand of wood is increasing every year. This includes the increasing of paper demand.
The government is not taking this problem serious enough. There are still many
illegal logging industries in Thailand.
There are many ways to solve this problem.
One easy way is to recycle things that are made from trees. Use the brands that
made papers from recycle papers. Government need to give education to people
about recycling. Many people still don’t know why recycle is important.
Recycling can help to save natural resources such as trees. While stop cutting
down trees seem to be impossible because trees are important for industry, also
affect job opportunities, we could try to cut down less trees. Making a law to
control logging is a good way to control deforestation. The law should prevent the forest are that
should not be cut down from being cut down. But in Thailand laws don’t seem to
work, so making laws is not a good solution. We also could find a new way for
farming to prevent cutting down more trees. There are many places for farming
without cutting down trees. We could lower the demand of food that used a lot
of spaces to farm for example eats less cows.
Another interesting solution for deforestation is to replant trees or we
called “reforestation”. This solution seems to be the most realistic solution.
In many countries, reforestation is helping to increase the forest area. It
takes a lot of time for trees to grow. So we need to stat reforestation as soon
as we can.
Deforestation problem is not hard to solve if everyone take care of it
seriously. Everyone needs to know that they are affected by deforestation. No
one wants to see flood or mud flow happening in Thailand. This problem needs to
be solved immediately or more bad things will happen to us. Everyone needs to
help solving this problem before it is too late. As Mahatma Gandhi once said
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world”
