Relationship between Economy and Deforestation
Before understanding how deforestation affects jobs, it is important to understand the relationship between deforestation and economy in the first place. According to the website of IIASA(International Institute for Applied System Analysis), the “economic growth in poor countries increases along with deforestation rates, but the effect disappears in wealthier economies”(2017). In other words, developing countries is increasing their rate of deforestation as their economy grows, but developed countries are increasing their economy growth with little to no increase of deforestation activity.This effect is peculiar but understandable considering developing countries require more natural resources like wood for materials and buildings. Developed countries on the other hands, have established many of their buildings already.
What does this mean?
This means that in the future, developing countries like China and countries in Africa will be contributing to the majority of deforestation within the world. One example IIASA provided was how countries in Africa will be doing with their current and future rate of deforestation. According to IIASA, “The results suggest that Africa is expected to be particularly vulnerable to forest cover loss as sub-Saharan economies catch up on income per capital with the rest of the world”(2007). In other words, developing countries like countries in Africa are likely to look for trees within their continent as natural resources. Not just Africa, this will likely be the same action among all developing countries. While they are doing that, developed countries like America will be doing less of it, but they will be experiencing the effect of deforestation like global warming. This will result in a heated argument where developed countries are trying to put a restriction on other countries to reduce the activity of deforestation, but developing countries will strike back because they need it for their growth.
Future Policies and Trends
Some examples of these restrictions are putting a limit on the activity of deforestation, something like twenty percent every decade for developing countries and ten percent for developed countries. When regulations like these are passed, other countries will use other natural resources to boost their economic instead. Natural resources like mineral, coal, and iron will become the next top commodities in the world. We can expect the competition and price of these natural resources to be increasing steadily as woods are beginning to deplete.
Source: Cuaresma, J. (2017, January 16). Trade-offs Between Economic Growth and Deforestation. Retrieved from http://www.iiasa.ac.at/web/home/about/news/170116-forest-dev.html
