Deforestation continued last year at a rate far beyond pledges to end the practice by 2030, according to a major study published yesterday.
Forests nearly the size of Ireland were lost last year, according to two dozen research organizations, non-governmental organizations and advocacy groups, with 6.37 million hectares of trees felled and burned. This “significantly exceeded” levels that would have kept the world on track to eliminate deforestation by the end of the decade, a commitment made in 2021 by more than 140 leaders.
Forests are home to 80 percent of the world’s terrestrial plant and animal species, and crucial for regulating water cycles and sequestering carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas responsible for global warming.
Photo: AFP
“Globally, deforestation has gotten worse, not better, since the beginning of the decade,” said Ivan Palmegiani, a biodiversity and land use consultant at Climate Focus and lead author of the “Forest Declaration Assessment” report.
“We’re only six years away from a critical global deadline to end deforestation, and forests continue to be chopped down, degraded, and set ablaze at alarming rates,” he said.
Last year, 3.7 million hectares of tropical primary forest — particularly carbon rich and ecologically biodiverse environments — disappeared, a figure that should have fallen significantly to meet the 2030 objective.
In high-risk regions, researchers pointed to backsliding in Bolivia and Indonesia. The report said there was an “alarming rise” in deforestation in Bolivia, which jumped 351 percent between 2015 and last year.
The “trend shows no sign of abating,” it added, with forests largely cleared for agriculture, notably for soya, but also beef and sugar.
In Indonesia, deforestation slumped between 2020 and 2022, but started rising sharply last year.
Ironically, that is partly down to demand for materials often seen as eco-friendly, such as viscose for clothing, and a surge in nickel mining for electric vehicle batteries and renewable energy technologies.
There was better news from Brazil.
While it remains the nation with the highest deforestation rates in the world, it has made key progress. The situation has significantly improved in the Amazon, which has benefited from protective measures put in place by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
However, in the Cerrado, a key tropical savannah below the Amazon, deforestation has increased.
Erin Matson, senior consultant at Climate Focus and coauthor of the report, said “strong policies and strong enforcement” are needed.
“To meet global forest protection targets, we must make forest protection immune to political and economic whims,” she said.
The report comes in the wake of the European Commission’s proposal last week to postpone by a year (to the end of next year) its anti-deforestation law, despite protests from non-governmental organizations.
“We have to fundamentally rethink our relationship with consumption and our models of production to shift away from a reliance on overexploiting natural resources,” Matson said.
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
A judge in Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant for the British member of parliament and former British economic secretary to the treasury Tulip Siddiq, who is a niece of former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in August last year in a mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule. The Bangladeshi Anti-Corruption Commission has been investigating allegations against Siddiq that she and her family members, including Hasina, illegally received land in a state-owned township project near Dhaka, the capital. Senior Special Judge of Dhaka Metropolitan Zakir Hossain passed the order on Sunday, after considering charges in three separate cases filed
APPORTIONING BLAME: The US president said that there were ‘millions of people dead because of three people’ — Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy US President Donald Trump on Monday resumed his attempts to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths. Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden. Trump told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.” “Let’s say Putin No. 1, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, No. 2, and
RSS