The United Nations recently raised concerns regarding the health and climatic impacts of particles emitted by vegetation fires in regions subject to land use changes and human driven deforestation such as South-East Asia, where they are responsible for 10, 800 premature deaths per year.

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The research was possible only because Brazil has good data on human development and on deforestation, which these days is measured by satellites.

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But apart from discovering the majesty of the Sahara, Jibunoh also witnessed how drought, deforestation and human intervention were turning fertile land into desert and condemning people to acute poverty.

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But the environmental challenges of species protection and human poverty amelioration are only too real, with deforestation occurring at a rate of some 2% per year, at least between 2002 and 2005, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

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Human activity, however, especially in the form of agriculture, deforestation, hunting and pollution, has inexorably reduced the numbers of these species, leaving many of them teetering on the brink of extinction.

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More generally, we have to accept that carbon dioxide is a by-product of many different human activities, most of which are legal and necessary human activities that range from the production of electricity to subsistence farming which contributes to deforestation.

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