‘FOREST DECLARATION ASSESSMENT’: A report said there was an ‘alarming rise’ in deforestation in Bolivia, which jumped 351 percent between 2015 and last year

AFP, PARIS

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.

The Desert of Gilbues, Brazil, is pictured on Sept. 30 last year. Gilbues is Brazil’s worst desertification hot spot, a phenomenon experts say is caused by rampant erosion exacerbated by deforestation and reckless development.

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.