academic essay: the cause of deforestation in South East Asia

In Singapore, every cigarette pack has a grotesque picture showing health related problems due to smoking. Yet most of the smokers remain indifferent towards the warning even though they know that the threat is genuine. Similarly, despite knowing that deforestation, which is defined as the conversion of forested land to non-forested land for human purposes, is linked to global warming and resource depletion, logging continues to happen in South-east Asia. This is presumably because of the insatiable need for resource, land and revenue fuels the force of deforestation.As mentioned earlier, deforestation is partially due to the never ending demand for raw materials that are derived from forest. Wood, which is one of the most abundant resources found in forests, has become necessities for every human society. In traditional civilizations, wood is primarily used as fuel and raw material for furniture. Whereas people nowadays extend its use to papermaking and even weapon making. And due to the increase in human population and urban development, demand for timber continues to rise. In Indonesia alone, millions of hectares of rainforest are being cleared and the timber collected is shipped to different parts of the world like China and Japan for further processing("Japan depletes Borneo's rainforests",2006). To make the situation worse, logging companies in Malaysia practice clear cut logging, a process whereby almost all the trees in the forest are being cleared. This unhealthy method of logging practice does not give enough time for the trees to regenerate, resulting in deforestation. Hence, the need of raw materials is a major factor that results in deforestation in South East Asia.Another drive for deforestation is the need for land. About 6.7 millions hectares of forest is cleared in Malaysia and Indonesia for oil palm plantation alone (FoE Netherlands, 2004). Due to the high demand for oil palm as bio fuel and the inflation of fossil fuel prices, the value of oil palm is on the rise. This accounts for the large scale plantation in South East Asia and it hints that more forest will be replaced by oil palm trees to meet the demand. Thus, the biodiversity of the forest will continues to drop and more species of animal will face the threat of extinction. Therefore, the demand for land has to go down to reduce the rate of deforestation in South East Asia.The third and possibly the most important reason for deforestation is the need for revenue. After the 1997 Asia economic crisis, countries like Indonesia were under a heavy international debt. To pay off the debt, the government is obliged to allow several multi-national logging companies to remove the local forest as a form of payment. As a result, millions of hectares of rainforest were removed in Sumatra alone ("Deforestation".n.d). Furthermore, income generated from deforestation is also used to aid in the economic development of the countries. Lands cleared for plantation and the timber obtained from the forest have brought thousands of jobs and millions of dollars for the locals in Malaysia and Indonesia. These industries have already become a vital pillar of the countries economy and the very livelihoods of the workers depend entirely on them. Therefore, although the impact of deforestation is widely known, it is very unlikely that countries in South East Asia will choose reducing deforestation over economic gains.In conclusion, deforestation in South East Asia remains a crucial problem because of the increasing need for resources, land and money to support the demand. Hence, an effectively short term solution to significantly reduce deforestation is almost an impossible task. Rather, the focus should be put on research so that new materials can be invented to replace the need for timber. Selective logging plan should also be implemented to allow reforestation of cleared land. If humans do not make a swift decision to curb deforestation now, our future generations will be the one suffering from the sins we are committing.ReferenceJapan depletes Borneo's rainforests; China remains largest log importer mongabay.(2006,July 10). Retrieved March 19,2008, from http://news.mongabay.com/2006/0710-itto.htmlDeforestation. (n.d). From Wikipedia. Retrieved March 19,2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeforestationFoE Netherlands (2004, April 28). Palm oil major cause of deforestation in Southeast Asia. Retrieved March 19,2008, from http://www.milieudefensie.nl/globalisering/nieuws/040428eng.htm

my paragrah test on 'zero waste policy'

Zero waste, which is a plan to reduce the amount of waste produced by using materials that can be repaired, reduced, recycled into other products, is a system that is implemented to replace to replace landfilling and other traditional ways to dispose waste. Singapore should follow the zero waste system as it is a far better way as compared to landfilling to dispose waste.
Disposing waste by landfilling exhaust large area of lands, an asset that is very precious to small countries like Singapore. Thus, Zero waste policy is preferred as the amount of land needed is greatly reduced. Moreover, the landfilling method will cause serious environmental issues liek pollution of underground water. The zero waste scheme can, on the other hand, reduce that effect of such pollution as there will be less waste to be disposed. However, the introduction of such scheme means that huge amount of capital and advanced technology is required for research and development on the related field. Fortunately, Singapore has enough capital and the technology to invest on zero waste scheme. Thus to conclude, zero waste system is definitely a more suitable way to dispose waste that landfilling in Singapore.

My paragraph assignment

Climate change due to global warming in recent years has brought along several urgent issues that will have a drastic impact at a global scale if left ignored. Habitat destruction is one of such issues of concern. Deserification is occurring at a faster rate than before while large percent of marine habitats are affected by global warming. These are only two of the many ways habitat is affected by climate change that affect not only animals and plants, but also pose a potential threat to our very existence.
Fortunately,there are quite a number of solutions to retard the rate of habitat destruction currently. One of the ways is to reduce that rate of climate changes caused by human activities. Thus, the emission of greenhouse gases has to go down. On a continental scale, countries should emulate the European union(EU) to reduce the emission of carbon dioxide significantly. Another alternative is to develop more advanced technology to reduce emissions and monitor the rate of climate change and habitat destruction. This is more feasible as it allow nations to reduce emission with their economic growth being compromised.Next, more research should be conducted to focus on development of gadgets and methods to produce hydrogen economically so that automobiles can become more "clean and green". Raducal ideas like using genetic engineering to enable plants to survive in harsh conditions can also be considered after careful research. this endures the survival 0f plants in the current condition that human have made. Thus, more carbon dioxide can be removed since more plants are available and more endangered plant species can be preserved. To conclude, humans have to harness the potential of technology fast to slow down the progression of environmental problems before its grows out of control.

What difficulties do you have writing? How do you resolve them?

I think that grammar is my weakest part in writing. I still can recall the days in secondary school whereby i could get 16/20 for my content but only 6/15 for my language. There was once where my english teacher described my writing as incorrigible. And the worse part, i have to check out the dictionary for the meaning of it. Moreover, mandarin is the main language that i used to converse with my friends and family. Learning a language requires continuous practices which i seriously lack. Thus, my ability in English writing can hardly improve under this environment.

Perhaps the only ways to deal with my problem is to use English more frequently in conversation and writing. Hence, i tried to converse with english more often with my friends so that my command of english can improve. It has shown some success currently and i hope that i am able to speak as well as i could using mardarin in the near future. For grammar, perhaps more readings can allow me to be familiarize with its usage. With the help from the notes prepared by my course mate, i believe that my grammar can improve gradually as the module goes on.

Which specific environmental problem should a notion such as your homeand focus for the nest 10 years?

For my homeland, Singapore, growing population will be the most crucial environment concern for the nest 10 years. According to minister mentor Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's population will rise from the current 4 million to 6 million in the future. This will inevitably lead to an increase in consumption and waste produce in Singapore. Moreover, an increased in population will also cause the rise in demands ranging from luxury items such as cars to readily available things like plastic bags. On the average, a person consume about 3 litres of oil and generate nearly 2 kg of rubbish a day. Hence, growing population can be seen as the root of exhaustion of natural resources and all pollutions. Although the government of Singapore has been doing their part in reducing pollution and consumption like imposing strict rules and regulations in industries, it is far from sufficient. Everybody in Singapore should play their own parts in conserving resources. In Scotland, teenagers wasted almost a third of all the electricity consumed in gadgets that are left in standby mode.With increasing population, the situation in Singapore will definitely worsen. However, more advance technology like hydrogen fuel is urgently required to dramatically reduce pollutions and exhaustion of crude oil to the point that the harm cause by human can be reverted. If we fail, the price for future generation will be too dear to pay.

The meaning of life.

The meaning of life from my point of view is simply doing your very best in every aspect of life. However, others often only try to achieve their best instead. Although it sounds similar, 'trying' often allow one to give excuses to themselves to procrastinate rather than giving their full hundred and ten percent. Telling yourself. "You can do it." rather than, " I'll try my best" actually give oneself less room for failure and hence, more probability to succeed. At the end of the day, one can confidently say to himself that he have done his best irregardless of the result. Through this simple value, I feel that life as a student, which is full of dull theories and equations, becomes more fulfilling and challenging. For this instance, I have to learn English language which I loathe in tertiary education. Ironically, this module is becoming more interesting as I strive to identify the flaws in my writing and at the same time, make more friends. In fact, I felt that EG1471 tutorial is most interactive and the least boring class among the modules that I have took after only 2 lessons. (Perhaps it is because all my other classes are technical based modules. Oops!) Thus I wish that everyone who have read this can strive for the best and enjoy what you are doing. Life is short, do not live in regret.