FAQs about Environment

7. How does intensive agriculture and livestock affect the environment?

Aggressive deforestation of forests has three main causes: obtaining timber for sale, gaining land for cultivation, and getting vast areas for raising livestock. This aggressive deforestation began in the 1970s.

The consequences have not been long in coming: “47% of the world’s forests are threatened by compulsive felling of trees, which are disappearing at a rate equivalent to 27 football fields per minute, according to WWF data, published in 2019″.

COVID-19 has not been an impediment to stop the destruction, so we have: “The voracious deforestation in Colombia, one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, does not stop. Not even in the midst of the pandemic and containment measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus. ” According to the newspaper El País, dated 05/13/2020.

An article published on 06/18/2018, which quotes the FAO, entitled “causes and effects of deforestation”, indicates: “It is estimated that some 7.3 million hectares of forests (more or less the size of Panama) they are lost every year.

SGK-PLANET identified “12 dangers that loom over the Amazon rainforest”, under the umbrella of “the progressive destruction of the Amazon”, in a graphic report documented with figures, texts and dozens of pictures is worth a thousand words.

The images and figures that are handled are frightening. From this it follows that human have not been able to stop this environmental chaos, mainly because the countries that “own” the forests appeal to national sovereignty. Although it is known that the effects of the damage can even have global consequences.

Given this evidence, it is not possible to imagine the number of ecosystems that have been destroyed in just half a century. It is not possible to know how much habitat is lost annually, how much biodiversity is deteriorating, how many trophic chains are broken, how much environmental degradation is or how many species enter the endangered lists. Will deforestation be regulated in the next ten years?

According to a recent report by the UN agency for the environment, entitled: “We live unsustainably and thus we will not reach the environmental goals of sustainable development by 2030.” Later it indicates: “we have not yet adopted the pace of change necessary to be in line with the 2030 Agenda, say those responsible for the document who add that the world cannot maintain this rate of use and abuse forever.”

Despite all this, WWF maintains a certain optimism: “There is still hope to stop the degradation of the forests. WWF is working around the world to establish a coordinated, zero-tolerance response to unsustainable and illegal logging.”

Other sections of Environment

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June 5 was established as World Environment Day by the United Nations General Assembly in 1972. On that date, the Stockholm Conference “First Earth Summit” was held at the initiative of Sweden and in conjunction with the UN.
This year’s World Environment Day will be hosted by Pakistan. The theme of the year is “Restoration of ecosystems”, and the motto is “Reimagine, recreate, restore.” It will be in this environment that the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030 is launched.

World Environment Day is celebrated on June 5 of each year. In 2020 the venue of the event will be Colombia. Topics to be discussed will be the Amazon, air quality, health, circular economy, and climate change. The central theme is  “Conservation of biodiversity” and the motto “Time for Nature”. The environment is the space that sustains biodiversity and therefore life on Earth. By its definition, an environment cannot exist on a planet devoid of life since its statement implies the relationship of living beings with their environment.

Beat Air Polution

World Environment Day is celebrated on June 5, dedicated this year to the fight against air pollution with the moto “Beat Air pollution”. Established by the UN in 1972, during the Stockholm Conference, whose central theme was the normalization of human relations with the environment. China will be the global host of the 2019 World Environment Day. The country’s government has committed that day to organizing celebrations in many cities, with a main event in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. In the north of China there are several cities where the air is practically unbreathable due to pollution.

Environmental pollution, in the classical concept, occurs when certain elements that cause harmful effects accumulate in quantities that nature cannot recycle. A contaminant is a substance that is found in a medium to which it does not belong or that does so at levels that can cause adverse effects. A species is in danger of extinction when its existence is globally compromised. Humans, in a short time, we have turned the Earth into a kind of supermarket where we are supplied with everything we need, including the spaces to build our towns, cities, mining camps, agricultural and livestock lands. We have wrested huge areas that recently belonged to the other species, without much regard to the damage we have caused them.

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