Geography Year 8: Causes of Deforestation

Forrest Fires

Slash and burn farmers, can sometimes accidentally cause forrest fires if their fire spreads.

When the trees burn down in a forest fire, many habitats are lost

When you burn the trees carbon dioxide is released, this adds to the global warming.

Logging

• 87% of the logging in Congo is illegal, loggging became illegal in 2002 however, the goverment cannot properly enforce this law.

• Congo will loose around 1.2 million acres of primary rainforest by 2020.

• Felled trees are tied together, and are used as rafts, the river itself is stained caramel from the sap of the felled trees.

Mining

The DR Congo want to increase it’s oil develpoment from 25,000 barrels a day to 1 million barrels, this woud reduce economic stress.

Population Growth

• The population is growing, this means that they will need to take more recources from the rainforest, they gather more firewood

• When they cook more as they have more mouths to feed, carbon dioxide is released more often and they make up 5% of the annual greenhouse gas emmissions world wide.

• Over 90% of Congolese families cook on charcoal.

• The wood cut to produce this charcoal outweighs the wood cut by loggers by seven times.