Whenever people talk about deforestation, usually the things that come to mind are negative thoughts caused mainly by media hype and environmentalist impulses. People think of global warming, the depletion of natural resources, and the casual extinction of native fauna and flora. However, people don’t seem to realize that there are actually quite a few benefits to deforestation.
One of the easiest benefits of deforestation to detect are the economic ones. Wood products are one of the most basic building materials in human society. Whether it is raw wood used to make tables and houses, or paper and other wood derivatives, we simply cannot live without the use of wood. Like steel and stone, wood is one of the most basic natural resources, and unlike steel and stone, it is renewable simply by growing more trees. The only real trick to balancing your consumption is to grow more trees to replace the ones that have been taken.
On a similar note, keep in mind that many jobs revolve around the use of wood. Aside from wood cutters, there are those who work in processing plants to make glue from wood sap, process pulp into paper, and others. This is another benefit of deforestation; it opens up more job opportunities for people who would otherwise be unemployed. These job opportunities are more than just a humanitarian concept; society at large would suffer if all the people who work in the logging industry were suddenly out of a job.
This profit from deforestation not only covers the people who cut down trees and process them, but also extends to the people who “clean up” after them. For every piece of forest cleared, arable land becomes available to farmers, or can be used as an area to locate urban living sites such as apartments, houses, and buildings. The number of people employed by a construction project of this type are many and varied. Or, if the city/government mandates replanting of trees to replace lost trees, then jobs are also provided for those who plant after a piece of forest is cleared.
Come to think of it, cleared areas are places that provide a lot of growth potential, and this is yet another benefit of deforestation. As stated above, arable land is valuable, and the act of deforestation to clear a place for agriculture provides a much-needed additional food source for man. Most of the time, the soil of a forest is much richer than that of normal agricultural land due to the wide variety of life it supports. This new area of land provides a much-needed place to grow a food supply to cope with the planet’s ever-expanding human population.
Then, of course, there is the fact that these cleared areas can be bulldozed for urban renewal. Given the increasing growth of our population, the additional living areas created on cleared forest land are another benefit of deforestation. These places can be converted into more than just living areas. Buildings can be placed in these deforested areas that can house offices for work, or factories to produce clothing and other essentials, or even research facilities for things like new medical or technological advances.
Finally, another benefit of deforestation to consider is the access it provides to other natural resources that may be found within the forest land area. Some places with dense forests are home to deposits of iron ore, minerals and even oil that can be used for human needs. Otherwise, these natural resources would remain dormant and untapped unless people access them. The act of deforestation may not be entirely necessary to reach these deposits at times, but coupled with the advantages given above, the combination of opening a new mine or oil well when taken with additional living spaces or farmland for food long ago. sense.
So given all the benefits of deforestation outlined above, you can see that more often than not, the good outweighs the bad. The planet’s environment can indeed be affected by deforestation, but that is due to the irresponsible use of resources and other benefits provided, not the deforestation itself. As people who live on the planet, our duty is not to “hold back” and stop cutting down trees. It is using what we collect from the Earth responsibly and wisely for the benefit of humanity and the planet.