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Brandon Hina

DIY Project: Write Up

In lesson 9 of our class, we covered forests and evaluated how the world has been using

the resource. Many countries are cutting down their forests, in order to clear land and increase

production of timber products. In the article, Poor nations’ economies grow with rising

deforestation, Baraka Rateng highlights the link between economic growth and deforestation.

Poor nations are experiencing economic growth with deforestation but wealthier countries aren’t

experiencing those same rates. Rateng explains that increases in deforestation will continue to

increase as countries, specifically in Sub-Saharan Africa, pursue economies similar to developed

countries (Rateng, 2017). These countries are experiencing so much income from their forests

that they can’t afford to stop cutting them down. However, increases in deforestation results in so

many external costs.

One of the biggest external costs is the extinction of species. Dianne Dotson describes

how deforestation effects mammals, in Animals Losing Their Homes in The Rainforest. Many

mammals are being restricted to fragmented habitats in rainforests. Tree species specifically, find

themselves homeless and cannot adapt to treeless environments (Dotson, 2019). In this project, I

will asses some of the nations with the most severe deforestation problems. The data is

interactive on al visualizations in the dashboard. Data on forests net change area rate is provided

by the UN Food and Agricultural Organization for 2005, 2010, and 2015. Data on GDP history is

provided by World Development Indicators for every country in 2005, 2010, and 2015. Data on

endangered mammals is provided by the United Nations Environmental Program in their 2018

report.
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My first visualization is my custom legend. The legend is essential in describing the data

in all of my other visualizations. There are 10 countries present in my legend, each acquiring a

different color that will be consistent throughout the rest of the project. These countries had the

lowest net change area rate of forests in 2015. Negative net change rates indicate a country is

cutting more forest area then they are growing, in terms of acres. The countries are presented in

descending order. Togo, located at the top, has the lowest net change rate at -8.113. Myanmar,

located at the bottom, has the highest net change rate, of the 10 countries, at -1.782.

The next visualization in a bump chart of these 10 countries. It follows the same order as

the legend. It shows how each country has ranked throughout the years, compared to the rest of

the countries. Togo is ranked first, while Myanmar is ranked tenth. Each country has held a

similar rank throughout the three years, with the exception of Chad. This shows that these

countries are consistently cutting down their forests each year with no sign of change. They are

maintaining their top spots as the lowest net changers in the world. From 2005 to 2010, and 2010

to 2015, every countries net change area rate got more negative.

My third visualization is a bar chart that plots the 10 countries’ Gross Domestic Product

in 2005, 2010, 2015. I provided the global mean GDP in all three years, to show how far off each

country is from the rest of the world. To calculate mean GDP, I took the global GDP in each year

and divided it by the number of countries in the world (195). Every country is below the mean,

except for Nigeria in 2010 and 2015. This shows that the countries with the biggest deforestation

problems are usually poor and developing. It’s also important to notice that every country

experienced continual growth in GDP from 2005 to 2015. This proves that Rateng was correct in

his conclusion that poor countries experience high levels of economic growth from deforestation.
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GDP isn’t the best measure of economic well-being but it provides a nice baseline.

My last visualization is a packed bubbles chart, to show the amount of endangered

mammals in each of the countries. The bigger the bubble of each country, the more endangered

mammals they have. There is a constant trend that the lower the net change rate, the more

endangered mammals a country has. Uganda and Nigeria are two of three countries with the

lowest net change area rates and they have 31 endangered mammals. Zimbabwe and Paraguay

have two of the three highest net change area rates and they have 10 endangered mammals. Togo

and Myanmar are considered outliers and should be ignored when determining the meaning of

this chart. Togo has a small number of endangered mammals (13) because it is such a small

country. Myanmar has such a high number of endangered mammals (49) because the tropical

rainforest in Southeast Asia is unique, compared to the rainforest in Africa and South America.

The data in this project, represents topics we have discussed in class and have read about

in Endangered Economies. In lecture, we discussed how deforestation effects the biodiversity of

forests. Cutting down trees destroys the most biologically active habitats in rainforests. The life

of these species is unique to that region and is unmatched anywhere else on the planet.

Deforestation causes extinction so that’s why it was important to analyze the amount of

endangered mammals in each country. Endangered Economies suggests we should stray away

from the measurement GDP, when calculating a countries economic well being. GDP measures

the depletion of natural resources as income for a country. However, Endangered Economies

argues that the depletion of natural capital is hurting the country and should be measured as a

loss (Heal, 2017, p. 165). Each of the 10 countries GDP grew from 2005 to 2015. Sure countries

are making profits off their timber, but what happens when all of their forests are gone?
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References

Dotson, J. D. (2019, March 2). Animals Found in the Tropical Evergreen Forest. Retrieved April

20, 2020, from https://sciencing.com/animals-found-tropical-evergreen-

forest-7388926.html

Heal, G. M. (2017). Endangered economies: how the neglect of nature threatens our prosperity.

New York: Columbia University Press.

Rateng, B. (n.d.). Poor nations' economies grow with rising deforestation. Retrieved April 20,

2020, from https://www.scidev.net/sub-saharan-africa/forestry/news/poor-nations-

economies-grow-rising-deforestation.html

United Nations Statistics Division (2015). Food and Agriculture Organization of the United

Nations (FAO). Retrieved from https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/indicators/database/

United Nations Environmental Program and the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (2018).

Retrieved from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.MAM.THRD.NO?

end=2018&name_desc=false&start=2018&view=map

World Bank – World Development Indicators (2017). World Bank national accounts data, and

OECD National Accounts data files. Retrieved from http://data.worldbank.org/data-

catalog/world-development-indicators
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