IF you’ve ever seen large-scale deforestation, especially of the rainforest, and seen it close up when it’s just happened, you feel you’re in the aftermath of an armoured battle. The scale of the destruction stuns you: cleared ground which seems to be everywhere smoking, burning tree stumps flickering like huge candles. It feels as if some giant beast has torn off a great lump of the landscape and savagely consumed it, leaving bits of it bleeding behind.
Serious deforestation has been going on for more than 30 years across the tropical zones of the world, starting in Amazonia and gathering speed, spreading to Indonesia and then to West Africa.
The effect has been staggering: rainforests, which provide us with so much, from oxygen production to carbon storage, once covered 14 per cent of the Earth’s surface; now they cover about 6 per cent, and the devastation is continuing.
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