The most affected country is Brazil, where 43% of the forests destroyed are located
The planet lost an area of virgin rainforest the size of Switzerland or the Netherlands by 2022, with the vital ecosystem being destroyed mainly by agriculture and livestock, according to analysis of satellite data published today.
That means an area the size of a football field was destroyed or burned every five seconds during 2022, a 10 percent increase from the previous year, the Washington-based World Resources Institute (WRI) reported.
WRI’s deforestation monitoring satellite platform, Global Forest Watch (GFW), recorded the destruction in 2022 of more than 41 million hectares of virgin rainforest, considered critical for the planet’s biodiversity and carbon dioxide storage coal.
The most affected country is Brazil, where 43% of the forests destroyed are located. This is followed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (13%) and Bolivia (9%).
“We are losing one of our most effective tools for tackling climate change, protecting biodiversity and supporting the health and livelihoods of millions of people,” commented GFW Director Michaela Weiss.
Deforestation in 2022 released 2.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, equivalent to the annual carbon emissions of India, the world’s most populous country, WRI noted.
“Since the beginning of the century we have seen the bleeding of some of the most important forest ecosystems on the planet, despite years of efforts to reverse this trend,” Weiss emphasized.
90 billion tons of carbon dioxide
About 1.6 billion people, almost half of whom belong to indigenous tribes, depend directly on forests for their livelihoods.
In Brazil, deforestation worsened under the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2023) and increased by 15% every year, according to the GFW report.
His successor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was sworn in in January, has pledged to end the destruction of the Amazon by 2030. But experts say he will have to face many challenges to do so.
In addition, scientists fear that the Amazon Basin will eventually turn into a savanna due to climate change and deforestation. This transition will result in the deregulation of weather conditions in Latin America and the rest of the planet.
About 90 billion tons of carbon dioxide are stored in the trees and soil of the Amazon forest, twice the annual global emissions.
“Halting and reversing deforestation is one of the most effective ways we have today to mitigate the situation,” warned Frances Seymour, a WRI expert.
Damage was limited in Indonesia
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, nearly 5,000,000 hectares of forest were destroyed in 2022, according to the report. The main cause is agriculture and coal production, vital for households, 80% of which do not have electricity.
Bolivia also failed to reduce the rate of deforestation, which instead increased by 32% in 2022 compared to the previous year. Main causes are cocoa cultivation, gold mining and wildfires.
In contrast, Indonesia saw a reduction in forest destruction for the fifth year in a row.
Source: Skai
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