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