In my last blog, I expressed my concern about the global environmental crisis. Deforestation is, unfortunately, an androgenic cause of the impending disaster that is staring at our face.

In the beginning, it must be admitted that the actual quantification of the carbon footprint resulting from deforestation is still in the realm of approximation. But the scientific reasons behind the contribution of forests in carbon sequestering are proved beyond doubt. There is also no doubt about the extent to which trees contribute to the prevention of soil erosion – another significant cause that acts as a decelerating cause behind growth of trees. Regeneration of environment is well documented and scientifically validated.

Though some policymakers of influential nations or those nations harbouring natural real estate crucially determining the earth’s environment have started to take a different view, global warming is no longer an issue in dispute. Take for example the case of the Amazon forest. Recently, it has been reported that the gold miners have gone and killed the leaders of an Amazon tribe because they were prevented from prospecting within the habitat of the tribe concerned. The prospectors were destroying the environment that was crucial to the livelihood of the tribal.

The Guardian recently reported that the Amazon’s pristine jungle was being destroyed every day at a clearance rate equivalent to a Manhattan island. If we remember that the jungle of Amazon is known as the lung of the world it doesn’t take us long to realize the crisis we are facing.

Trees breathe out oxygen and breathe in carbon dioxide. So all the carbons that our civilization emits get naturally filtered by the trees. It doesn’t take a huge intellect to understand that if we destroy forest we will destroy the natural filter of carbon that’s inimical to our survival. We can’t breathe carbon and if the environment gets carbon-heavy we are doomed.

It just doesn’t stop here. Trees are natural dams against flood and soil erosion. It leads to the earth’s inability to hold water and therefore flooding. With the topsoil gone, the rain tends to wash sediments into rivers thereby clogging up streams of rivers – a situation that is significantly responsible for a rise in the rates of flooding being witnessed globally. In Madagascar, the rivers run red due to soil erosion.

Deforestation, or destruction of tree cover, has a feedback loop on the availability of food for human consumption as well. It not only destroys biodiversity, but it also takes away soil fertility as well forcing us to use more chemical fertilisers and pesticides – known to have greatly contributed to the rise in various types of diseases, including cancer – or even forcing us to claim more forest land. You take away some and then you are forced to take away more and then more of it. In the process, we kill ourselves a little and then more of us and then, ultimately, all of us. The planet will live on without us, but we will not live without the Nature we were born into.