An estimated 41.8 per cent of Southeast Asia’s total population or almost 245 million people live in urban areas (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2010). The cause of deforestation due to urbanization can be explained in two ways. Firstly, when people from rural villages move to cities, they tend to use more resources since their incomes and rates of consumption are generally higher (Gourmelon, 2016). This leads to more pressure being put onto forests to produce more animal and processed food products, which leads to more clearing of forests to provide land. An additional 2.7–4.9 million hectares of cropland per year will be required to feed an increasing urban population (Gourmelon, 2016).
Secondly, cities are often expanding into forested areas. As such, the area covered by urban zones is projected to expand by more than 1.2 million square kilometers between 2000 and 2030 (Gourmelon, 2016). This leads to deforestation as forests are being cleared to make way for commercial land use to build infrastructure to cater to the growing population.