World missed deforestation goal in 2023, report says
A report has revealed that an area of forest the size of Latvia was lost to deforestation last year. Tropical regions are losing the most trees, though Brazil shows signs of improvement.
In 2023, 6.37 million hectares of forest were destroyed, almost equivalent to the size of Latvia, according to a report by the organization Forest Declaration Assessment published on Tuesday.
To stay on track for eliminating deforestation by 2030, this figure should not excede 4.4 million hectares, a target that has been widely surpassed.
The main causes of this massive destruction of trees were agriculture, road construction, fires, and commercial logging, according to the report.
"Globally, deforestation has gotten worse, not better, since the beginning of the decade," Ivan Palmegiani, lead author of the Forest Declaration Assessment report, said.
"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.
Tropical rainforests in focus
According to the report, one of the key ways to meet global forest targets is to reduce deforestation in the tropics.
However, nearly 96% of all deforestation in 2023 occurred in tropical countries like Brazil, Indonesia, Bolivia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Tropical Oceania was the only tropical region to meet the 2023 target.
Brazil, although still the country with the highest deforestation rate globally, has significantly improved its situation since Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva became president.
Measures implemented by the Brazilian government to protect the Amazon rainforest, which acts as a carbon sink, have reduced deforestation in the region by 62%, according to the report.
However, in El Cerrado, a savanna region south of the Amazon, deforestation has increased.
Meanwhile, the biggest setbacks occurred in Bolivia and Indonesia. In Bolivia, deforestation surged by 351% between 2015 and 2023, a trend that "shows no signs of abating," according to the researchers.
In Indonesia, deforestation began to rise again last year after two years of decline.
The report notes that this is partly due to the demand for materials used to produce "eco-friendly" products such as viscose for clothing and nickel for electric vehicle batteries and renewable energy technologies.
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