Anti-Deforestation Plans

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.