Tropical forest the size of England destroyed in 2018: report
Last year humanity destroyed an expanse of tropical forest
nearly the size of England, the fourth largest decline since global satellite
data become available in 2001, researchers reported Thursday, according to AFP.
The pace of the loss is staggering – the equivalent of 30
football fields disappearing every minute of every day in 2018, or a total of
120,000 square kilometers (46,000 square miles).
Almost a third of that area, some 36,000 km2, was pristine
primary rainforest, according to the annual assessment from scientists at
Global Forest Watch, based at the University of Maryland.
"For the first time, we can distinguish tree cover loss
within undisturbed natural rainforests, which contain trees that can be
hundreds, even thousands, of years old," team manager Mikaela Weisse told
AFP.
Rainforests are the planet's richest repository of wildlife
and a critical sponge for soaking up planet-heating CO2.
Despite a slew of counter-measures at both the national and
international level, deforestation has continued largely unabated since the
beginning of the century.
Global forest loss peaked in 2016, fueled in part by El
Nino weather conditions and uncontrolled fires in Brazil and Indonesia.
The main drivers are the livestock industry and large-scale
commodity agriculture – palm oil in Asia and Africa, soy beans and biofuel
crops in South America.
Small-scale commercial farming – of cocoa, for example – can
also lead to the clearing of forests.
A quarter of tropical tree cover loss in 2018 occurred in
Brazil, with the Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia each accounting for
about 10 percent.
Malaysia and Madagascar also saw high levels of deforestation
last year.
Nearly a third of primary forest destruction took place in
Brazil (13,500 km2), with the Democratic Republic of Congo (4,800 km2),
Indonesia (3,400 km2), Colombia (1,800 km2) and Bolivia (1,500 km2) rounding
out the top five.
Madagascar lost two percent of its entire rainforest in
2018.
Indonesia a bright spot
"The world's forests are now in the emergency
room," said Frances Seymour, a distinguished senior fellow at the World
Resources Institute, an environmental policy think tank based in Washington DC.
"The health of the planet is at stake, and band aid
responses are not enough," she added.
"With every hectare lost, we are that much closer to
the scary scenario of runaway climate change."
Globally, forests absorb about 30 percent of man-made
greenhouse gas emissions, just over 11 billion tonnes of C02 a year.
Oceans are also a major "sink", soaking up another
23 percent.
Burning or clear-cutting vast tracts of tropical forest not
only releases carbon into the atmosphere, it reduces the size of the sponge
that can absorb CO2.
One bright spot in the report was Indonesia, which lost
3,400 km2 of primary forest in 2018 – a 63 percent drop compared to 2016.
In 2015, massive forest fires on Sumatra, Borneo and other
Indonesian islands leveled 20,000 km2 and generated health-wrecking pollution
over a large swathe of Southeast Asia.
In Brazil, however, trend lines are moving in the wrong
direction.
"Our data shows a big spike in forest loss in 2016 and
2017 related to man-made fires," Weisse said of Brazil.
"Shockingly, we are also seeing invasions into
indigenous lands that have been immune to deforestation for years."
Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro, who come into office in
January, has vowed to curtail environmental regulations and allow commercial
farming and mining on indigenous reserves, which comprise more than 10 percent
of Brazil's territory.
The researchers emphasized that Bolsonaro has not been in
office long enough to assess the impacts of his policies on deforestation.
In West Africa, meanwhile, 70 percent of primary forest loss
in Ghana and Ivory Coast occurred in protected areas, pointing up the need for
stricter enforcement.