Life Changing Trees: Save a Tree and Change Your Life

Part 8: Without Trees, People's Homes and Livelihoods Will Be Destroyed

(Previous parts at the end of the article)

Approximately 300 million people live in forests all over the world, including 60 million indigenous people who's very survival depends on the forest itself. Millions more people live along the fringes of forests. Even a few urban trees can raise property values.

According to the U.N, more than 1.6 billion people's livelihoods rely on forests to some extent and a further 10 million people are employed in forest conservation or management. Forests only contribute 1% to global GDP through timber and non timber merchandise. Yet, non timber products support up to 80% of the entire population in a number of developing countries.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization about 2.5 billion people's livelihoods depend on agriculture, these people would also feel the full force of a lack of trees, as the soil becomes full of pollutants that used to be filtered by trees and as the soil quality deterioates and loses its arability, these people will lose their livelihoods and people around the world would lose their food.

More places should look at Enkoping as an example of how to harness a tree's awesome power, as not only do they use trees to recycle wastewater, but they captilize on harnessing the power of faster growing trees by using them for biomass (electricity) production. The more trees that become important to use for different and essential reasons, we will become able to save more.

source