A teacher explains that forests are a renewable resource

Why

Harish has read the word carefully and taken it at its meaning, which is a good habit — renewable really does mean it can replace itself. The part the word hides is TIME. Renewable says a forest regrows; it does not say how fast, and a teak tree takes decades to reach the size a saw removes in an hour. What decides whether a forest survives is the race between the rate of cutting and the rate of regrowth. Cut slower than it grows and it lasts forever; cut faster and it shrinks every year until it is gone, renewable or not. Picture a bucket with a tap filling it and a hole draining it — 'refillable' tells you nothing until you compare the two speeds. Sunaina is right: renewable describes the process, not a guarantee, and that is why forests can and do disappear.