Direction (Qs.1 to 5): Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

The implications of forest loss extend far beyond the borders of the states in which the forests grow. The role that rainforests play at the global level in weather, climatic change, oxygen production, and carbon cycling, while significant, is only just beginning to be appreciated. For instance, tropical rainforests play an important role in the exchange of gases between the biosphere and atmosphere. Significant amounts of nitrous oxide, carbon monoxide, and methane are released into the atmosphere from these forests. This metabolism is being changed by human activity. More than half the carbon monoxide derived from tropical forests comes from their clearing and burning, which are reducing the size of such forests around the world.

Another consequence of deforestation must be examined. In the upper Amazon River basin of South America, the rainforest recycles rains brought primarily by easterly trade winds. Indeed, surface transpiration and evaporation supply about half the rainfall for the entire region, and in basins of dense forest far from the ocean such local processes can account for most of the local rainfall. Should the Amazon Rainforest, which accounts for 30 percent of the land area in the equatorial belt, disappear, drought would likely follow, and the global energy balance might well be affected.

The primary forces causing tropical deforestation and forest degradation can be tied to economic growth and globalization and to population growth. Population growth drives deforestation in several ways, but subsistence agriculture is the most direct in that, the people clearing the land are the same people who make use of it. Rural populations must produce what food they can from land around them, and in the rainforest, this is most often accomplished via slash-and in the rainforest, this is most often accomplished via slash-and-burn agriculture. Forest is cleared, the cuttings are burned, and crops are planted for local consumption. However, the infertile tropical soils are productive for only a few years, and so it is soon necessary to repeat the process elsewhere. This form of shifting agriculture has been practiced sustainably among aboriginal cultures world wide for centuries. Small patches of forest are cleared and abandoned when they become unproductive. The community then settles another isolated part of the forest, thus allowing previously settled land to regenerate.

However, in areas throughout the tropics larger populations than before now live at the forest margins. As subsistence agriculture progresses onto adjacent land, there is no opportunity for regeneration, especially if the shifting population is increasing. In some regions lowland forests have already been exhausted, and upland forests have been cleared. Land located on the slopes of hills and mountains is particularly susceptible to erosion and, therefore, to loss of the topsoil needed to sustain vegetation - arboreal or agricultural. Lowland tropical forests are not immune to erosion, however, as the heavy rainfall washes away unprotected soils

Another subsistence-related factor in deforestation is demand for fuelwood, which is the main source of energy for 40 percent of the world’s population. As population increases, this demand exerts significant and growing pressure on tropical forests, particularly in Africa.