Win-win solution for forests, people
The forests are rapidly dwindling. But the people living in forest areas need to live off the land. Supporting them to practise sustainable or green farming saves both the forests and the locals’ livelihoods. Why then is this win-win solution only applied to some local areas, and not yet scaled up to a wider scale?
One of the reasons is the lack of understanding of how sustainable agriculture benefits farmers’ livelihoods, the environment and public health. Meanwhile, decades of intensive chemical farming have produced ample evidence of how harmful it is to the environment and public well-being.
Apart from severely affecting farmers’ health, toxic from chemicals lead to soil degradation, kill living organisms in the soil, contaminate the waterways, and persist in the food chain, causing consumers a variety of illnesses.
KANNIKA THAMPANISHVONG & NATTHAPORN BUTPHO
