Deforestation has a direct human cost, measurable in lost lives: almost 30 thousand a year. This is the number of people dead not because of the ax or of fire, but of the lethal fever that is unleashed when the forests disappear. To reveal this silent massacre is a new study published in the magazine Nature Climate Change, which for the first time connects the deforestation to a surge of deaths related to the heat.
How trees protect us from the heat
Each forest acts as a biological air conditioning. His hair shields the rays of the sun and, through perspiration, release the water vapor in the air that refreshes the environment. Knock this natural shield means condemning local populations to an immediate and deadly increase in temperatures, which is added to the global warming already in progress.
The impact of this wave of artificial heat is very vast. The researchers estimate that, between 2001 and 2020, 345 million people have been directly exposed to this phenomenon. For 2.6 million of them, the temperature increase has exceeded 3 ° C. In a world that already struggles to contain global warming, it is an acceleration towards unsustainable conditions.
The most affected areas
This Ecatombe has its epicenter. The most serious is the South-East Asia, which due to the high population density in the deficted areas records more than half of the deaths alone. Tropical Africa and Americas follow. In these regions, the heat linked to deforestation comes to represent over a third of all the mortality due to heat, showing that it is one of the main killers.
Professor Dominick Spracklen of the University of Leeds, co-author of the study, summarized the discovery in a lapidary way in a comment to the Guardian: “Deforestation kills”. His words underline an uncomfortable truth: “These forests are not inactive: they are working hard and doing something really important for us. They regulate the temperature, bring rainfall and support agriculture on which people depend.”
The main cause of this fever, as the study indicates, is agricultural expansion. The global question of raw materials such as soy, palm and meat oil therefore has a direct link with this environmental, climatic and health crisis.
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