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The loss of the world's tropical primary forests increased by 10 percent annually in 2022, resulting in the global destruction of tree cover the size of Switzerland, according to new research.
That is 10 percent more than the previous year and equal to nearly a football field's worth of mature tropical trees being cut down or burned every five seconds, day and night, most of it destroyed to make way for cattle and commodity crops, according to the World Resources Institute.
With a reduction of 1.8 million hectares (around 43 percent) of its tropical old-growth forest in 2022, Brazil has lost most of it, followed by Bolivia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In comparison to 2021, deforestation has increased in these three nations in 2022. Brazil has had the highest rate of deforestation among them since 2005, particularly in the Amazon region.
Tropical forests destroyed last year released 2.7 billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere — equivalent to India's fossil fuel emissions, according to the World Resources Institute's Global Forest Watch unit.
However, Malaysia and Indonesia have shown signs of improvement, with rates of tropical primary forest loss falling to near-record lows in recent years. Non-fire-related deforestation in Indonesia has decreased by 75 percent since 2016.
(Cover image via VCG)
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Disinformation report hotline: 010-85061466