Slashing humanity’s reliance on fossil fuels will require billions of kilograms of metal: a single wind turbine can contain more than a metric ton of copper, and electric car batteries demand heaps of cobalt, nickel and manganese.
![THE GOVERNMENT HAD TO EMBARK ON A MAJOR TREE-PLANTING REVOLUTION AS THE DEFORESTATION RATE WAS BECOMING A CONCERN. [FILE PHOTO]](/sites/default/files/styles/news_teaser/public/treePLNTING_FJ.jpg?itok=fpckuy0C)
The government had to embark on a major tree-planting revolution as the deforestation rate was becoming a concern.
The world’s 100 most significant timber and pulp companies score just 22.6%, on average, when assessed across 175 environmental, social, and governance indicators, according to the latest assessment by the Zoological Society of London using its Sustainability Policy Transparency Toolkit (SPOTT).
As the global population has doubled to 7.8 billion in about 50 years, industrial agriculture has increased the output from fields and farms to feed humanity.
More than half of the world's aboveground carbon is stored in tropical forests, the degradation of which poses a direct threat to global climate regulation. Deforestation removes aboveground carbon in the form of trees, reducing the size of global carbon stocks in the process.
As humans diminish biodiversity by cutting down forests and building more infrastructure, they’re increasing the risk of disease pandemics such as COVID-19.
The destruction of ecosystems through human practices such as deforestation is a factor behind the creation of the COVID-19 global pandemic. That is the view of the Samoa Conservation Society Executive Member, Tupaemanaia Dr.
The world’s tropical forests are in serious trouble, with deforestation worsening and the sixth mass extinction accelerating faster than scientists previously thought.
Increased logging activity has been reported from Brazil, Colombia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Nepal and Madagascar since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Reduced monitoring by enforcement authorities and social upheaval have both been cited as reasons for the increase.
In December 2019, Mongabay published a review of decade in tropical forests. The analysis wasn’t fully complete because forest loss data for 2019 hadn’t yet been released.