Monocultivos y deforestacion en ecuador

SEK INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES

ENVIRONMENTAL SANITATION II

ING. ANDRES MONTALVO

DEFORESTATION AND MONOCULTURES FOREST IN ECUADOR

WILLIAM PAUL PALACIOS VARGAS

SIXTH SEMESTER “B”

INTRODUCTION
Deforestation is the process by which the Earth loses its forests in the hands of men.

The man in his striving to satisfy their personal needs orcommunity uses wood to make many products. The wood is also used as fuel or firewood for cooking and heating. On the other hand, economic activities in the field require areas for livestock or for growing different products. This has generated a lot of pressure on forests.

When a forest is cut, the organisms living there, they are rendered homeless. In many cases the animals, plants and otherorganisms die or turn them to move to another forest. Destroying a forest means overcome many of the species that live there. Some of these species are not known to man. Thus many species are being lost every day and disappearing forever from the planet.

The rainforests of our planet, located mainly in South and Central America, Central Africa and Southeast Asia, suffer daily the indiscriminatefelling of trees, many with hundreds of years old, every minute that passes is an area devastated of forest equivalent to that of a football field.

There are two main reasons that cause this. One is the demand for wood by certain countries, which allows third world debtor nations easy money, the other is the transformation of forests in areas used for agriculture and livestock. The first reason iscost effective for those who practice it, but not the second, the soils of the tropical ecosystem containing a high percentage of iron and aluminum. When exposed to the action of sunlight and air it hardens, and the lack of fertile land that is left is destroyed by the rains.

Although occupying only fourteen percent of the forest land area containing sixty percent of plant and animal specieslive on the planet. In them there are many resources that could be used by humans without harming the ecological balance, from edible plants to chemicals used in many different fields of medicine and industry.

Another issue related to forests: carbon dioxide. Industrialized countries emit 2.2 billion tons of this gas from burning fossil fuels, while other nations launched into the air other 1300million tons per year as a byproduct of massive forest fires.

It is well demonstrated that the destruction of forests has resulted mainly from poor agricultural practices and livestock, problems associated use and land tenure. In fact, these main elements causes of deforestation, forest show that the problem has been strongly linked to the land and agrarian reform models and agriculturalproduction in the country.

The beginning of the process of deforestation in Ecuador coincided with the arrival of Spanish colonists. However, this process was practically nonexistent in the East, very pronounced on the coast and more intense in the Sierra, where the Europeans focused their actions.

Deforestation takes on added importance with the production of cocoa at the beginning of theperiod of independence, followed later, and in the early decades of this century, the cultivation of bananas. From the 1950's, deforestation is accelerating, particularly in the coast and in the 1970 in the East. Nationally, the rate of deforestation was estimated for the years 1990-93, in 100000-300000 hectares annually. Estimates vary widely from a low of 75,000 hectares a year and a maximum of400,000 hectares per year, to an intermediate figure of 250,000. It is considered that the Coast region has been deforested over 90% of original forest, while the East has cleared 30%.

In all cases, deforestation has led to the complete disregard of the rights of indigenous peoples who inhabited and inhabit the forests, which shows how little has changed the view of cystic conqueror until today in...