Deforestation in the Tropics

Tropical forests have always served to satisfy human needs for timber, land, and other resources, but their rapid destruction in the last several decades and the adverse effects on ecology and human communities have become too glaring to ignore. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in 1990 estimated that only 1,700 million hectares of tropical forests remains worldwide, and annual deforestation since 1980 is 17 million ha. Timber has long been the principal reason for the exploitation of forests. Although all forests throughout the world face various threats of destruction, those in the tropics, in particular, are disappearing at alarmingly high rates as a consequence of rapid and systematic destruction. Japan’s connection to the tropical deforestation problem can basically be summed up in one fact: it is the world’s single largest importer of tropical hardwood. Japan is not the first or only country to exploit foreign resources and inflict environmental damage overseas.