World losing area of forest the size of the UK each year, report finds
An area of forest the
size of the UK is being lost every year around the world, the vast majority of
it tropical rainforest, with dire effects on the climate emergency and
wildlife. The rate of loss has
reached 26m hectares (64m acres) a year, a report has found, having grown
rapidly in the past five years despite pledges made by governments in 2014 to
reverse deforestation and restore trees.
Charlotte Streck, a
co-founder and the director of Climate Focus, the thinktank behind the report,
said: “We need to keep our trees and we need to restore our forests. Deforestation has
accelerated, despite the pledges that have been made.”
The New York
declaration on forests was signed
at the UN in 2014, requiring countries to halve deforestation by 2020
and restore 150m hectares of deforested or degraded forest land. But the rate of tree
cover loss has gone up by 43% since the declaration was adopted, while the most
valuable and irreplaceable
tropical primary forests have been cut down at a rate of 4.3m hectares
a year.
The ultimate goal of
the declaration, to halt
deforestation by 2030 – potentially saving as much carbon as taking
all the world’s cars off the roads – now looks further away than when the
commitment was made. In Latin America,
south-east Asia, and Africa – the major tropical forest regions – the annual rate
of tree cover loss increased markedly between 2014 and 2018, compared with 2001
to 2013. While the greatest losses by volume were in tropical Latin America,
the greatest rate of increase was in Africa, where deforestation rates doubled
from less than 2m hectares a year to more than 4m... read more
