In our foreseeable future do we have more forests or deserts?

Forests make up nearly 33% of the land area on our planet. 1.6 billion People rely on the benefits that forests offer, that include food, fresh water, medicinal herbs and shelter. Most o the world’s threatened and endangered animals live in forests.

Forests also counter the negative effects of climate change. They serve as carbon stores, taking in the carbon dioxide that would be left in the atmosphere.

Every year 58 thousand square miles are lost — the equivalent to one football field every two seconds. The study, from the nonprofit research organization Center for Global Development, predicts that as much as 2,890,000 square kilometers — or over a million square miles — of tropical forest could be lost to deforestation due to land being cleared for industrial agriculture. Jonah Busch, a coauthor on the report, said they found a pattern to the destruction.

“That amount of loss will have a big impact on the climate because trees store a lot of carbon,” Busch said, “and when they’re burned, and cleared for soy or beef pastures, or palm oil, all that the carbon that’s stored in the trees goes up to the atmosphere.” Busch and his colleagues estimated that 169 billion tons of carbon-di-oxide could be released, which is the annual quantity of pollution emitted from about fifty thousand coal-burning power plants. Busch also said that half of the projected deforestation could happen in Latin America, with the other half split between Asia and Africa.

The forest cover of the world will increase by at least 10 percent of its original value today in the next 5–10 years. A few countries will increase their forest cover drastically like northern parts of Africa and Mongolia. As far as the United States is concerned the forest cover has increased, at this point of time they have more trees now than what they had hundred years ago. The Indian and Chinese government will continue to implement their schemes unless they have reached their country’s goal. Hope other countries start to implement schemes and programs to improve their forest cover.