New Farmlands Driving Out Forests Causes Climate Change Study Says
September 5, 2010 at 5:22 AM by AHN · Leave a Comment
Stanford, CA, United States (AHN) – More than 80 percent of new farmlands in tropical countries have come from the felling of trees, increasing the release into the atmosphere of carbon that causes global warming, a study has found. The expansion of farmlands is expected to increase due to growing global demand for agricultural products.
More than half a million square miles of new farmland created in tropical countries, such as Brazil and Indonesia, between 1980 to 2000 was due to the felling of forests which in turn, accelerated the release of carbon into the atmosphere resulting in global warming, according to a new study led by Stanford postdoctoral researcher, Holly Gibbs, of the Department of Environmental Earth System Science.
“Every million acres of forest that is cut releases the same amount of carbon into the atmosphere as 40 million cars do in a year,” elaborated Gibbs. “The tropical forests store more than 340 billion tons of carbon, which is 40 times the total current worldwide annual fossil fuel emissions. If we continue cutting down these forests, there is a huge potential to further contribute to climate change.”
The increase of agricultural land in tropical countries is due to increasing global demand that is projected by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization to double by the year 2050. That translates to millions of additional acres of tropical forests felled over the next 40 years.
The Stanford research team noted that the creation of new farmland and deforestation was due to big, corporate agribusinesses rather than small farm families who used to do the logging and tree-cutting.
This was seen as fortunate and manageable. According to Gibbs, “The good news is that pressure from consumer groups and nongovernmental organizations combined with international climate agreements could provide a real opportunity to shift the tide in favor of forest conservation rather than farmland expansion.”
The study was published in the online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
