Anti-Deforestation Plans:
Why is it that they are not set in motion immediately?
by Omar García Pérez
I’m writing this letter to comment on three problems about the approach
given to deforestation, which is one of the key environmental issues of our
time.
In today’s man-centered society, many people focus more on how to
improve the economy and the quality of life, and place less emphasis on how to
preserve the Creation, the planet, or the world. In this sense, the problem of
deforestation is something that has been discussed too much, and resolved too
little, and there are three main stumbling-blocks that I think need to be
considered while observing this topic.
The first is the fact that, in the ecological field, governments tend to
give priority to the economic profits they can obtain through the selling of
woods, and they care little about problems human beings can cause through the
destruction of habitats or ecosystems. The attitude of the political powers is
of course hypocritical; in the public discourse, many express their alleged
concerns about the importance of protecting nature, but, ever so often, they
themselves perpetuate and overlap deforestation in foreign territories.
Besides this, we must see that the problem of deforestation is not just
about prohibiting the cutting of trees, for we have many institutions that
boost – in theory – initiatives to reduce deforestation, but allocate minimal
resources to the implementation of renewable energy. In this sense, nothing
will be resolved if we just try to prevent something, without offering
solutions. This is why the reduction of deforestation and the factual use of clean
energy fuels must be two things understood hand in hand.
The third problem – maybe the most important of all – comes when people
do not feel accountable for their acts. They tend to be unmindful about the
future generations, and think that the bad effects deforestation might cause
will only be happen in the long term – not to them. But the time has come to understand
the biblical prophecy in Revelation 11:18, i.e., that those destroyed the earth, shall also be destroyed. Somehow,
everything is connected in the universe and we eventually will have to reap
what we sow, whether we like it or not.
Though some people have taken the initiative to propose programs that
seek to resolve deforestation in the world, I believe that unless we consider
these three aspects, little progress will be done to mitigate the problem as a
whole.
