Brazil was the leader, in 2021, in the loss of tropical forests in the world. Alone, the country that has the largest tropical forest on the planet accounted for 40% of the registered deforestation, according to data from Global Forest Watch, a tool of the non-governmental organization WRI (World Resources Institute) in partnership with the University of Maryland, in the USA.
The data were published this Thursday (28).
Altogether, primary tropical forest losses amount to 3.75 million hectares (37,500 square kilometers). In Brazil, according to the platform, the loss was 1.5 million hectares, or 15,000 square kilometers, a figure lower than that documented in the previous year, but higher than the figures for 2018 and 2019.
The tool shows that there has been a significant increase in forest loss in western Amazonia, with new points of great expansion of deforestation along roads.
Destruction in more untouched areas of the forest, such as those found in the Amazon, has worried researchers for some time. According to Fabíola Zerbini, director of forests, agriculture and land use at WRI Brasil, this is not a change in patterns, but only an expansion of the points with the strongest deforestation.
In addition to the massive loss of biodiversity, the clearing of tropical forests also has a considerable impact on greenhouse gas emissions. In Brazil, the deforestation of the Amazon and agribusiness activities are the main sources of emissions in the country.
According to Global Forest Watch, in 2021, 2.5 gigatons of CO were emittedtwo by clearing native tropical forests, figures not far from the emissions across India.
“The world will not reach the climate goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C if the Amazon is not protected,” says Zerbini. “It is a global project that Brazil has conditions to lead.”
It is increasingly unlikely that the world will be able to deliver on the central promise of the Paris Agreement, in which countries pledged to reduce emissions in order, preferably, to avoid a temperature rise of more than 1.5°C – most of that difference already was occupied on the thermometer.
Despite knowledge about human responsibility for the climate crisis, greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase over the past decade. To be able to meet the target, drastic cuts will be needed in the coming years.
Second on Global Forest Watch’s list of countries with the greatest loss of tropical forests is the Democratic Republic of Congo, with 0.5 million hectares cleared (about 5,000 km²). There, there are links between destruction and an expansion of agricultural spaces.
The list is followed by Bolivia, Indonesia and Peru, but all with considerably smaller data than the Brazilians.
This top 5 has remained almost constant in recent years, with only one change from Indonesia, which, in 2020, dropped one spot — rates of primary forest loss were reduced for the fifth year in a row in the country; compared to 2020, the drop is already 25%.
Still on Indonesia, WRI points out some risks for the protection of forests: the current high price of palm oil and the end of the freeze on opening new areas for this type of plantation.
The top 5 countries in terms of primary forest loss, with the exception of Bolivia, signed the Declaration on Forests, a commitment to forest conservation with a view to stopping forest loss by 2030. The document was defined at COP26, the United Nations Conference on Climate Change , which took place at the end of last year, in Glasgow, UK.
Zerbini states that, although, of course, it is still not possible to see in the data possible effects of the declaration, the historical data present a certain level of stability. A possible Glasgow effect, then, would be welcome to help reduce losses.
The data presented by Global Forest Watch are different from those made available annually by Inpe (National Institute for Space Research). Both have their own methodologies for capturing and analyzing forest loss, therefore not being comparable.
There are still other methodologies for observing forest clearing by satellite. An example is the constant monitoring that Imazon performs.
Although the fall of tropical forests is of greater importance, there is also a loss of forests in other regions of the world. They are, however, different processes: in places further away from the tropics, losses usually do not result in a change in land use, as in Brazil, where deforested areas end up becoming a place for pasture and plantation. Global Forest Watch data also looks at them.
According to the platform, the loss of boreal forests reached the highest level in history last year, with about 30% growth compared to 2020.
The situation is related to the large losses of vegetation by fires in the Russian forest (in which the losses are always mostly associated with fire), in the worst fire season of the last two decades.
