The loss of tropical forests is helping drive climate change

Trees are biologically adapted to suck up CO2 at amazing rates. And the more trees there are around the planet, the more they can soak up atmospheric CO2 and store it in their leaves, hereby helping alleviate the effects of climate change. The obvious conclusion: we must cease cutting down existing forests and set about planting new ones.

“Forests are a major, requisite front of action in the global fight against catastrophic climate change – thanks to their unparalleled capacity to absorb and store carbon,” the United Nations observes. “Forests capture carbon dioxide at a rate equivalent to about one-third the amount released annually by burning fossil fuels. Stopping deforestation and restoring damaged forests, therefore, could provide up to 30 percent of the climate solution.”

Yet across much of the planet forests are being cut down as if there was no tomorrow. And if forest clearing continues apace, there will indeed be no tomorrow … or at least not one we will wish to experience.

Last year, according to the World Resources Institute, was the second-worst year on record as regards the loss of forests in the tropics. In all,15.8 million hectares of tree cover was lost in 2017, amounting to an area the size of Bangladesh. “That’s the equivalent of losing 40 football fields of trees every minute for an entire year,” the institute observes. In Brazil alone, more than 4.5 million hectares of forest was lost last year.

Nor was 2017 a particularly special year. For decades deforestation has been wreaking havoc with tropical forests and their wondrous ecosystems from Brazil to Laos. In the two decades from 1990 to 2010, a single tropical nation, Malaysia, lost an average of 96,000 hectares of forest each year, leading to the loss of 8.6% of forest cover. In the place of once lush woods with thriving biodiversity have sprang anodyne palm oil plantations. Last year Malaysia lost almost 500,000 hectares of forest.

Meanwhile, even as forests are being cut down with their carbon-storing capacity continuously reduced, agriculture and other land uses account for a quarter (24%) of global greenhouse gas emissions. “Awareness of the need for forest action has never been greater, nor has the ability to deliver transformative change,” the UN notes. “We need to continue reforming policies and building partnerships if we are to vastly increase investments in forest conservation, restoration and sustainable use.”