Problem Motivation of Deforestation:
Humans have been cutting forests for ages, but the rate of clearing has accelerated enormously
since the mid-twentieth century. The massive volume of global forest removal piqued the interest
of both researchers and the general population. The increased public awareness of forest loss gave
rise to the term "deforestation," which is defined as the conversion of a forest into non-forested
land cover groups such as agriculture, pasture, and built-up landscapes. It is commonly
acknowledged that deforestation causes biodiversity loss and a variety of other environmental
harms (Chakravartyet et al.,2012). Deforestation is widely acknowledged to be significantly
related to human population increase and the rising complexity of human society. Researchers
have investigated the causes of deforestation (Chazdon,2008;Chazdon,2008; Matthew,2010) and
made numerous attempts to explain these phenomena. Various measures at various dimensions
have been developed to help minimize and reduce deforestation worldwide (Sodhi,2008;
Meyfroidt and Lambin,2009). Forest area can be defined as natural or planted groups of trees with
a diameter of at least 5 meters in the locus, regardless of whether they are productive or not (World
Bank,2012). This definition of forest area excludes tree stands in agricultural production systems
(for example, agroforestry and fruit plantations) as well as trees in urban parks and gardens.
Forested areas are one of the most significant ecosystems for humans.
Deforestation's negative contributions, which include biodiversity loss and increasing greenhouse
gas emissions, are primarily a problem for poor countries. Trees are the oldest, most enduring,
highly functional, and frequently used raw materials, and they play an important role in greenhouse
gas supply and oxygen absorption. Forests cover 30% of the Earth's total surface, or around 3.9
billion hectares. The original forest cover was estimated to be around six billion hectares. Tropical
forest trees cover only 6% of the Earth's land surface. Trees are thought to produce between 70%
and 90% of all species on the planet (Shvidenko,2018). Deforestation has resulted in the extinction
of 50 to 100 animal and plant species per day. Many of these creatures, particularly those used in
medicine, are on the verge of extinction, despite their importance to humans. According to the
International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Nigeria is the worst country in terms of
deforestation rate. Nigeria's annual deforestation rate is 3.5 percent, or 400,000 hectares.
According to the Federal Ministry of Environment, 400 out of every 1,000 woods are deforested
each year, with just 26 hectares being reforested, leaving 374 hectares unforested. Forest
1
exploitation has the potential to increase the social asset base of vulnerable communities
(Laurance,1999). Because woods are located in remote places where national governments'
involvement is restricted, residents frequently lack basic infrastructure and are characterized by
poor growth. However, the social relationships built via collaboration, through the exploitation
and exchange of forest resources, have formed the foundation for the construction of social
amenities in forest edge villages, such as good roads, schools, power, and a reliable water supply
(Shukla et al.,1990). Deforestation occurs when forests are converted to permanent non-forested
land uses such as agriculture, grazing, or urban development. A forest is defined as an area with
more than 10% tree cover and more than half a hectare of land (FAO, 2005). A forest includes
both natural forests and forest plantations, but excludes tree stands planted primarily for
agricultural output. These trees include those grown for various types of fruits, as well as those
planted for oil palm fruit and agroforestry (Curtis et al.,2018). FAO also recognizes forest planting
of trees developed primarily for timber production and hence does not consider natural forest
conversion to planting to be deforestation. However, FAO does not consider tree plantations that
produce non-wood products to be forests, although rubber plantations are. Forest loss occurs when
the forest's ecosystem functions are damaged, rather than when the area remains wooded. The
basic idea of Neo-Marxism emerged in the midst of the HEP/NEP debate. Cross pollination has
taken place. Neo-Marxism was focused on the loss of the Marxist social movement's general
legitimacy during the failed revolts of the 1960s and the rise of numerous new social movements
that failed to fit into many Marxist theoretical structures of conflict sociology. Sociologists have
entered the conflict with observational research on these unique social tensions. In the 1970s, NeoMarxism emphasized the state's relative autonomy from capital management rather than being
simply an expression of class struggle's economic determinism, giving rise to this new theoretical
point of view (Andam et al.,2008). Instead of just labor/capital/state conflicts over production,
NeoMarxist principles of conflict sociology were applied to capital/state/labor/environmental
conflicts. As a result, some sociologists attempted to apply Marxist conceptions of social conflict
from this materialist setting to environmental social movements, rather than viewing
environmental movements as distinct from material difficulties as a more cultural "New Social
Movement." As a result, "Eco-Marxism" was centered on the application of Neo-Marxist conflict
sociology concepts of the state's relative autonomy. Unlike prior statements that all classical
sociology philosophers had fallen into the Human Exemption list Model, Foster stated that Marx's
2
materialism led him to theories labor as the metabolic process between humanity and the rest of
nature. His interpretation appeared to be quite close to the anthropocentric viewpoints that were
condemned early on. Instead, Foster contended that Marx was concerned with the Metabolic Rift
generated by capitalist society's social metabolism, particularly in industrial agriculture. Marx
described a "irreparable rift in the interdependent process of social metabolism" created by
capitalist agriculture that destroyed the land's productivity while also creating waste in urban sites
that failed to reintegrate into the land and thus contributed to the destruction of urban workers'
health. By examining the contribution of this thread of eco-Marxism to current environmental
sociology, Pillow and Brehm conclude that "the metabolic rift is a productive development in the
field because it connects current research to classical theory and links sociology with an
interdisciplinary array of scientific literature focused on ecosystem dynamics"( Lawrence and
Vandecar,2015).
References
1. S. Chakravartyet et al., Deforestation: Causes, Effects, and Control Strategies, 2012, pp.
978-953.
2. R. L. Chazdon, “Beyond deforestation: restoring forests and ecosystem services on
degraded lands,” Science, vol. 320, pp. 1458–1460, 2008.
3. P. M. Fearnside, “The roles and movements of actors in the deforestation of Brazilian
Amazonia,” Ecol. Soc., vol. 13, 23–44, 2008.
4. R. A. Matthew, Global Environmental Change and Human Security, MIP Press, 2010.
5. N. S. Sodhi, “Tropical biodiversity loss and people: A brief review,” Basic App. Ecol., vol.
9, pp. 93-99, 2008.
6. P. Meyfroidt and E. F. Lambin, “Forest transition in Vietnam and displacement of
deforestation abroad,” P. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, vol. 106, pp. 16139–16144, 2009.
7. World
Bank.
(2012).
World
Bank
Open
Data.
[Online].
Available:
http://data.worldbank.org
8. A. Shvidenko, “Deforestation,” in Encyclopedia of Ecology, 2018.
9. W. F. Laurance, “Reflections on the tropical deforestation crisis,” Biol. Conserv., 1999,
doi: 10.1016/S0006-3207(99)00088-9.
3
10. J. Shukla, C. Nobre, and P. Sellers, “Amazon deforestation and climate change,” Science
(80-. )., 1990, doi: 10.1126/science.247.4948.1322.
11. P. G. Curtis, C. M. Slay, N. L. Harris, A. Tyukavina, and M. C. Hansen, “Classifying
drivers of global forest loss,” Science (80-. )., 2018, doi: 10.1126/science.aau3445.
12. K. S. Andam, P. J. Ferraro, A. Pfaff, G. A. Sanchez-Azofeifa, and J. A. Robalino,
“Measuring the effectiveness of protected area networks in reducing deforestation,” Proc.
Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A., 2008, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0800437105.
13. D. Lawrence and K. Vandecar, “Effects of tropical deforestation on climate and
agriculture,” Nature Climate Change. 2015, doi: 10.1038/nclimate2430.
14. FAO (2005) State of the World’s Forests 2005. Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations, Rome.https://fao.org/docrep/pdf/007/y5574e/y5574e00.pdf
4