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Tropical forests systematically cleared –
background reasons

We generally know that tropical forests of the world have been cleared for tens of years. This has many reasons, greed for profit is only one of them. The most important and often invoked is the “lack of space and land”, on one hand due to the increase of population in the developing countries and on the other hand due to the rising prosperity and through this, the need for more space to be occupied by each inhabitant.

A second very important reason is that tropical forests do not bring any benefits in local politicians’ opinion, while clearing represents a profit from selling the wood, gaining land for agriculture and place of work and income for many people.

In the western industrialised countries 1/5 of the world’s population use 4/5 of the fossil fuel and pollutes the atmosphere with CO2 accordingly, while 4/5 of world population consume only 20% of the world’s energy production. This is the main reason why the West needs to keep or preserve the “green lungs” of the planet (even if only for allowing the western industrialised countries to produce unlimited CO2).

Each attempt to compensate the states involved for this “services” failed so far. Taking furthermore into account that the industrial countries themselves reduced dramatically the quantity of their forests at the time of industrial revolution, we miss not only any motivation to demand from the tropical countries to give up clearing, but it is unlikely for these countries to understand from their own perspective the need to respect this problem, unless the industrialized world makes a big effort to reduce CO2 emissions and fossil fuel consumption.