Even though the world is continuously promising to control deforestation, the rate of deforestation is only on the rise every year. As per the data from research of the World Resources Institute and the University of Maryland, forest equivalent to an area of a football ground is lost every 5 seconds. As per the report, the deforestation rate of 2022 is 10 percent more than that of 2021. Coming to the numbers, a total of 4.1 million ha area of forest is lost last year.
These countries contributed in the forest loss the most
Forest loss was highest in Brazil, Bolivia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Meanwhile, Indonesia and Malaysia continued the recent trend of low rates of tree loss.
More than 140 countries, including Singapore, signed the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow in 2021, pledging to stop and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030.
Mr. Rod Taylor, global director of forests at WRI, a Washington-based think-tank, said: “Are we on track to halt deforestation by 2030? The short answer is no.”
Brazil lost about 1.8 million ha of primary forest in 2022, which is referred to as mature woods that haven’t been recently removed or regrown. Of this total, it lost 344,064 ha to flames, a slight decrease from 2021, and 1.42 million ha to non-fire causes, an increase of 20%.
As global temperatures rise and droughts become more severe, fires are a significant and expanding source of forest destruction in the tropics and worldwide.
Large parts of Indonesia were ravaged by fires in 2015. Brazil suffered a loss of 1.6 million acres the next year due to flames. Russia lost 4.3 million acres of tree cover in 2022, with fires accounting for 73% of this loss.
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Earth is suffering at the hands of Humans
Tropical regions worldwide are losing forests more quickly than any other region, primarily due to agriculture, logging, and mining.
This is a problem because tropical rainforests contain enormous amounts of biodiversity and absorb a significant amount of carbon dioxide (CO2), the principal greenhouse gas. By holding a lot of water that might contribute to rainfall, these woods also control local and regional temperatures.
The removal of forests may result in significant CO2 emissions, a rise in local temperatures, and a worsening of drought.
A significant contributor to the loss of forests and emissions is wildfire, whether they are started intentionally or unintentionally.
“That loss (in 2022) resulted in the emissions of 2.7 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, which is equivalent to the fossil fuel emissions of India,” said Ms. Mikaela Weisse, the director of Global Forest Watch, an online information portal.
She stated at a media conference that despite years of efforts to reverse the trend, some of the most significant forest ecosystems in the world have been haemorrhaging since the turn of the century.
