Causes of Deforestation in Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia countries likes, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam lost nearly 800 square miles of forest every year from mid-1970s to mid-1980s. From this figure, most of the forests had been converting to an agriculture land. Thus, the agriculture expansion is the primary cause of the deforestation.

Southeast Asia region with the highest proportion of forest, which is 33 % in the world, has been reducing rapidly in the past ten years. According to an analysis from Chandra Giri of Science Application International Corporation (SAIC), 81 % of the deforestation from 1985 to 2005 was the result of agricultural expansion. This conversion to agriculture land may be result from an increasing of human needs and road expansion. Southeast Asian Nations with a combined population of about 570 has increase the amount of human daily needs. Thus, the expansion of the agriculture is necessary to meet these daily needs. In the others hand, the road development to improve overland transportation of goods may cause a limited amount of the deforestation. The road building towards a timber area and agriculture land also causes a limited amount of deforestation. Thus, the uncontrolled deforestation that due to an improper development in agriculture in Southeast Asia must be publishing and a proper solution must be carrying out.

Figure 1. Deforestation in continental Southeast Asia (excluding Malaysia and Indonesia) from 1973 to 1985. The black represents forest, the lighter areas deforestation. The dark gray represents cloud cover, and white areas are places for which no satellite information was available. During this time period, about 50,000 square miles was deforested. China and India are included on the map but no assessment of their forest cover was made.

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