Deforestation

Deforestation is most commonly perceived as an environmental issue. However, it also negatively affects ethnic and religious groups in various parts of the world. An article titled, “Deforestation: The Human Costs”, it predicts that in the next 25-30 years popular tropical forests will become unproductive land stripped of its identity.

Deforestation then poses as a threat to ethnic and religious groups because it destroys many homes for people around the globe. Tribal groups are forced to find a new area of land to inhabit because their land is destroyed. This forces them to be homeless and search for new land, which is times of desperation ends up being land already inhabited by other groups. This limits resources and causes tension at times. All of this due to a huge environmental issue, that many people do not care about or show interest in helping. If the groups that are being relocated have extreme difficulty finding forest that fit their way of life, they have to expand their search. This causes them to change the way of life they were accustomed to by “converting to agriculture or to cash employment”. Their rights to their land are completely disregarded as deforestation becomes an increasingly bigger problem. This is just another one of the benefits of tropical forests that is stipped as deforestation gets increasingly worse.