The humanitarian emergency
caused by few last months’ devastating floods in Asia warning that the situation
could get worse, The people affected by this crisis have lost everything, and
their difficulties are only just beginning two countries Pakistan and Thailand
badly hit by the disaster. Hundreds of thousands of people face a struggle for
survival over the next six months. Thousands of homes have been damaged,
possessions destroyed and hundreds of schools, roads and health facilities are
closed.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that by the year
2050 around 60 percent of the world's population will experience severe water
shortages, with 33 percent thought to be already under water stress. Water cycle
has been disturbed badly in all over the world causing, food depletion, drought,
flooding, rising sea level, increase in green house gases and scary food
shortage. The root causes behind the scene consider deforestations mainly.
Forests cover 31% of the total global land area. These forests give home to 80%
of Earth’s terrestrial biodiversity and the livelihood of 1.6 billion people
around the world depends on forests. Recognizing the global importance of
forests the United Nations declared 2011 as the International Year of Forests to
raise awareness on conservation, multiple use and sustainable development of all
types of forests. Forest as major source of climate play important role in
climate change and have great significance.
Forests have four major roles in climate change: they currently contribute about
one-sixth of global carbon emissions when cleared, overused or degraded; they
react sensitively to a changing climate; when managed sustainably, they produce
wood fuels as a benign alternative to fossil fuels; and finally, they have the
potential to absorb about one-tenth of global carbon emissions projected for the
first half of this century into their biomass, soils and products and store them
“Forests and trees on farms are a direct source of food and cash income for more
than a billion of the world’s poorest people,” Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) Assistant Director-General for Forestry Eduardo Rojas-Brails said.
“They provide both staple foods and supplemental foods. To enhance these
benefits, governments and development partners should increase investments in
support of sustainable forest management and rehabilitation of degraded forest
lands,” he added, noting that in India, more than 50 million people depend
directly on forests for subsistence, while in Laos wild foods are consumed by 80
per cent of its 6.4 million people on a daily basis.
Forests can play an even greater role in feeding the world with products ranging
from vitamin-rich leaves to fruits and roots. According to the U.N. Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO), there were 4.033 billion hectares of forest or
31% of total land area standing in the world in 2010. That's down slightly from
2000.
With 1 billion people suffering from chronic hunger, the role of forests for
timber must not overshadow their important contribution to feeding many of the
world's poorest communities, and their over-exploitation for wood must be
curbed, according to the Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF), a 14-member
group which includes several UN agencies.
The story of the world's forests is usually a depressing one. Tropical rain
forests are under pressure in South America, Asia and Africa, threatening
habitat for countless species and adding billions of tons of carbon dioxide to
the atmosphere every year. but the good news is that the rate of overall forest
loss has slowed considerably, dropping from 8.3 million hectares lost a year in
the 1990s to 5.2 million hectares a year, thanks in part to significant
reforestation taking place throughout much of Asia.
Emmanuel Ze Meka, Executive Director of the International Tropical Timber
Organization, noted, "Food products are the fastest growing component of
non-timber forest products in many tropical countries. And adding value to the
forest makes it more likely to remain forest rather than converted to other
uses."
Government and relevant authorities took serious action on the growth of trees
and forests otherwise situation of survival become very difficult as we see most
poor African countries especially just consider the example of Ethiopia that has
lost three-quarters of its remaining trees in the last twenty-five years. Forest
cover is now down to just 3%. This land, the birthplace of all humanity, has
grown barren. (It's the usual story: the greed of the former dictatorship;
unwise land policies; the desperate poor cutting trees for fuel.) Since 1985,
the year of the "Live Aid" concert, food production has declined by two-thirds,
and twice as many Ethiopians are going hungry.