Indonesian Deforestation
Hello!So I finally finished the artwork about the Indonesian Deforestation.I applied the last bits of paint last week and the last bits of varnish yesterday.
About the Artwork
It is a rather straight-forward artwork. The Indonesian Rainforests have experienced a loss of 50% in just 50 years, so I cut the artwork in two, replacing what used to be the rainforests with an outlined human, rough black paint and some text.I thought at some point to just fill this space with text, going into the various reasons of the deforestation (palm oil industry, unsustainable logging, too much logging roads, etc) but all have one common denominator : humans, so I decided this would be more to the point.I filled the human space with following text :
CorruptionConversion toPalm OilPlantations forIndustrialProductsProfitOverBiodiversityDamn ItHumanGet your shitTogetherWe JustHave1 Earth
I decided to put light on the palm oil industry, as I feel that is what westerners can work on more easily without much effort, just avoid unsustainable palm oil products using palmoilinvestigations.org or give up palm oil as a whole, since it's not a necessary ingredient in most cases.And I wanted a "funny" catchy end, hence the cursing.More info about deforestation :http://www.ran.org/indonesian-rainforestshttps://www.worldwildlife.org/initiatives/forestsI've also read a bunch of articles on Center for International Forestry Research, but can't find the specific ones I read, so here just two :http://www.cifor.org/library/6227/rapid-conversions-and-avoided-deforestation-examining-four-decades-of-industrial-plantation-expansion-in-borneo/http://www.cifor.org/library/2802/evaluating-whether-protected-areas-reduce-tropical-deforestation-in-sumatra/
Why is Deforestation an Issue?
80% of Earth's land animals and plants live in forests. Rainforests are loaded with unique biodiversity.Forest soak up carbon dioxyde and store it away, destroying forests, especially through fire, releases all the CO2 back in the atmosphere.Rainforest soils are moist, without trees, they dry up and end up being transformed into deserts.https://www.worldwildlife.org/initiatives/forests
Thoughtful Living
In a nutshell, I would like to remind everyone that what may balance our future from "completely doomed" to "it sucks, but it's still livable" is everyone making tiny changes in their life, so here, next to "avoid palm oil", just a few suggestions, working towards zero waste (using your own bags when shopping, buying from local farmers, avoiding heavily packaged foods), buying less, reducing your meat consumption, and the 5 R from Zero Waste Home : refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle, rot.Support planting trees by using https://www.ecosia.org to search the web and disable adblock is another easy thing to do.And unless you care about beauty products, olive oil as facial cream works great and if your skin doesn't like it after a couple of weeks, you still can revert back to whatever you were using before.