A common good, threatened by a few
Every year 23 million of hectares of forests are cut down and destroyed. The plants and animals that used to live in these forests either die or must find a new forest to call their home.
The forests, our fabulous heritage and common good, threatened by a handful unscrupulous actors. Even if some companies made huge fortune by plundering the forests, the damage they caused is far bigger. Damage that eventually we will have to pay.
World forests being destroyed because they provide resoruces and land to timber industry, cattle ranching and large plantations.
There are many factors causes the deforestation: fires, agricultural conversion, cattle ranching, overcrowding. Often the wood industry is the pioneer of the destruction, paving the way for the other actors and further waves of destruction. For ever.
Logging, monocolture of soya, palm oil, acacia, as well as mines and infrastructures (dams, roads etc.) are usually the first players of a long process of forest degradation. The roads opened by the industry, lead to further waves of forest exploitation, poaching, the settlements. Finally the forest is often converted in plantation, but in the tropics, once you all the trees are gone, the soil is unprotected. The sun will try the soil, the tropical rains will wash away the thin layer of humus. And immense areas of forests in the Amazon, Southeast Asia or Africa become unproductive deserts.