2018 reports massive forest destruction

Washington: 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.

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 kilometres (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, fuelled 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 per cent. 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 per cent of its entire rainforest in 2018.

"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. "The health of the planet is at stake, and band aid responses are not enough," she added.