The fact that deforestation in Indonesia is getting more and more happening in the years instead of lessening, is quite a concern.
Planting trees, even though it is quite possible, it takes a long time to grow to replace the one who already been cut down.
From a number of forest supervised under Greenpeace, the worst forest damage is caused by conversion of peatlands for palm oil expansion. As well as logging and burning.
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The decrease in peatland forests releases more than two billion tonnes of carbon every year. Like a sponge and foam, is a function of tropical forests to absorb carbon dioxide in the air.
Indonesia is currently experiencing a serious problem of haze that is attacking several regions in Indonesia, such as the area of Banjarmasin and the area of Riau. This happen because of the lack of attempt and awareness of how important it is to balance everything that we take from nature.
Illegal logging
Illegal logging has taken so many forest down behind our back that it’s hard to predict how many they’ve taken, meanwhile, the legal logging itself already took down so many. The erratic climate change, also believed to be one of the reason for Indonesia’s forest crisis.
Indonesia, surprisingly, is the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, after China and the United States. By 2012, Indonesia has become the fastest country to get its forest gone nation in the world surpassed the rate of deforestation in Brazil.
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The continuous of deforestation in Indonesia, of course, affect the balance of nature and bring a lot of disaster to the country.
Here is the list of the effects deforestation had to Indonesia:
1. Landslides
Landslides is one of the disaster faced by people or animal who live up at hills or mountains.
Mostly, landslides happen when forest lose its function to prevent such disaster from happening. At this case, deforestation is one of the reason for the disaster to happen.
Meanwhile, as the function of threes is to adsorb the excess water from rain.
Generally, landslides can be caused by several things, such as:
- Erosion due to the increase of water or rain, rivers or ocean waves erode the foot slopes of the steep.
- The slope of rocks and soil were weakened through saturation of heavy rain.
- Earthquake. It causes a vibration, pressure on the mineral particles and weak the area in the rock mass and resulting soil erosion of the slopes.
- Volcanoes. Due to volcanoes can produce dust, rain and dust flow.
- Simple things such as the vibration of the engine, the traffic, the use of explosives, and even an excessive weight of lightning.
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According to data gathers by Badan Nasional Penanggulangan Bencana, from 2010-2014, there are total five deadliest landslide tragedy in Indonesia. Such as:
- February 23rd, 2010 in Bandung, West Java.
33 dead, 17 injured, 11 missing, and 936 people were evacuated. - July 23rd, 2010 in Buru, Maluku.
18 dead, 7 wounded. - January 27th, 2013 in Agam, West Sumatra.
20 dead, 6 wounded. - March 25th, 2013 in West Bandung, West Java.
14 dead, 23 injured, 3 missing, and 185 people were evacuated. - December 12th, 2014 in Banjarnegara, Central Java.
20 people died, 11 people were injured and 88 people missing.
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2. The Discontinuation of the Food Chain
Forest is important to keep the food chain intact and balance. When trees start to get cut down here and there, it’s limited the food supplies for plant-eating animals. This could led into a lot of plant-eating animals death, which will also effect the carnivores.
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Deforestation in Indonesia has many time lead into a horrible tragedy such as carnivores come down to villages.
Few cases may not sound so bad but in other cases, it causes death to human. Animals with home no longer around, will try to find a place for nest and food. Unlike human, animals, especially the carnivores one only detect their food by the warm of their body. Many cases of animal eating human is causes by the lost of house and source of food up in the forest.
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The example of this can be seen from the latest case of a python eating a human in oil palm plantations.
Akbar (25) from Pangerang, Salubiro village, Karossa district, the regency of Mamuju, West Sulawesi, was eaten by a python when he is about to harvest oil palm. Herpetology researcher of the Institute of Agriculture (IPB), Mirza D Kusrini, say that the chance of human being eaten by python is small. The fact that it didn’t prevent this python from eating Akbar, is raises a question.
It’s very likely that the oil palm plantations was or is the nest of the python, therefore, it detect the warm of Akbar’s body and attack it out of hunger.
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3. The Low Quality of Oxygen
Since the beginning of the time, trees have always an important role for the continuity of humanity. Our oxygen come from the natural process that involve trees. Especially now, when the usage of vehicle is high and affect the air every beings breathe.
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Many forest were set on fire in order to make it easier for people to built an oil palm plantations. This movement give a lot of backlash for every living beings. Beside the fact that the oxygen we’ve breath become polluted, there is less trees to produce oxygen too.
The example of this case is the case of forest fires in Riau around 2016. 11 company are suspected to be the one behind the mess. The forest fires in Riau caused a thick haze hung in the air.
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4. Global Warming
Global warming is the hottest issue since the erratic climate change happen all over the world. Deforestation is one of the significant cause of global warming due to objects that produce carbon substances to cause the earth to getting hotter.
The carbon substances which can not be converted to oxygen by plants, especially when there no longer many plants around to do so. The carbon substances can also damage the Earth’s ozone layer and resulted the ice in the north pole to melted.
Global warming is a real impact from the effects of the greenhouse and the increasingly deforestation forests.
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5. Drought
The less trees around, the drier the environment around us has become. Tree, beside being an oxygen produce machine, is also where all the hot sunlight went to. As it is the part process of producing oxygen.
When deforestation happen, it’s become clear that not just only we got limited healthy oxygen but also the hot sunlight that human can’t adsorb. It is getting harder and harder to survive in dry seasons, especially if the dry season happen to be the worst of the year for some other geographically reasons.
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The example of this case can be seen in 2015. In that year, the drought hit 8 provinces in Indonesia, such as, West Nusa Tenggara, East Nusa Tenggara, East Java, Central Java, Yogyakarta, West Java, Southeast Sulawesi and Gorontalo. The drought has effect so many aspect of life in that area. They need immediately treatment, especially clean water for consumption and other needs.
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Head of Data Information and Public Relations BNPB Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said due to drought, the water crisis has also occurred on the island of Java and Nusa Tenggara that year.
According to the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics (BMKG) some are dry season drier due to the warming of sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific and central Asia. This has an impact on the mass of water vapor in the waters of Indonesia, attracted to that region.
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Effect of Deforestation in Indonesia on New Era
Until this very moment, deforestation keeps happening, especially the illegal one that almost impossible to keep track to. Disaster keeps happening, the quality of health keeps decreasing and the food chain has nearly become a mess.
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Even so, there is still hope regarding to prevent this deforestation from keeps happening. Reforestation still possible and keeping our eyes focus to illegal logging may as well help too. Now that we already taste the effect of deforestation and absolutely hate it, maybe it’s the right time to start making a difference.
