history of deforestation Essays

Man’s last chance to save the world

I. The use of deforestation has historically involved man and the environment since the dawn of time. During the progression of human civilization, the world has changed dramatically, and the resources that were once bountiful are now being salvaged and preserved. Humans have believed to be deforesting the world since the beginning of the primitive land, feeding off of its natural resources. For example Easter Island, who deforested their own island during the 17th century for religious purposes. Another example is the industrial revolution that didn’t help out the environment during the 18th to the 19th century. And the transformation of forest policy regimes that had happened in Finland since the 19th century.

II. The Deforesting of the land in Easter Island was based on humans willing to abuse their own environment, without realizing their future consequences.
a. “Easter Island is one of the most, remote inhabited places on earth. Only some 150 square miles in area, it lies in the Pacific ocean 2,000 miles off the South America and 1,250 miles from the nearest inhabitable island of the Pitcairn Islands.” (Ponting, 2007)1
b. In mans search for food, had been weakened for the fact that the Easter Island populace had deforested their land for mainly religious purposes.
c. Most of the trees had vanished because they had to build their ahu, which were gods. And they believed the bigger and more they had the more respectful it was to their gods.
d. When the settlers came to visit the land they had found that the island had carried very little resources.
e. Without access to trees, which were all gone the people of Easter Island didn’t have the opportunity to build canoes or boats to travel out to sea to capture fish or other resources.
f. Thus, leading to an environmental collapse and the people turned to cannibalism. III. A century and a half later man had evolved in a blink of an eye, and at the start of the late 17th century the forests natural resources would once again be put to the test.
a. “Electricity reduced many of the problems linked to urban smoke and dangerous working environment, as emission concern trated in fewer stations often located outside the cities, and electrical machines replaced steam engines.” (Kasa, 2009)2
b. This historical process had both contributed positively and negatively to anthropogenic environmental changes.
c. Positively, by the progression to start saving the environmental resources found in the forest and the world could start to feed the population with a mass consumption.
d. However, the negative side effects had lead to the problems of pollution and the poisoning of the animals and people.
e. This had also created smog, which had started to greatly hurt the earth’s ozone layers.
f. Newer technological advanced are always occurring and they have eased the rising problems found in the environment.

Iv. One country had greatly dealt with complications between government and the people inhabiting the area known as Finland as late as the 19th century.

a. Finland is “a country with 86% of its land area covered by forests, an economy dominated in the past by the forest industry, and a place in which forest account for a fifth of national exports”.(Kotilainen and Rytteri 2011)3
b. Human relationships had affected the environment based off of greed of the Finland government knowing that they could export most of the forested land to create a greater profit.
c. Knowing that they would be hurting the environment, the people of Finland wanted to protect what was left of the land.
d. So there

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