In 2019, 11.9 million hectares of forest were lost in the tropics, according to a report published in Global Forest Watch, a platform that provides data and tools for forest monitoring. Almost a third of these losses occurred in humid tropical primary forests, which are areas of mature tropical forest especially important for their biodiversity and carbon storage. We are talking about the destruction of an area of this type of forest every six seconds, which is equivalent to a football stadium.
Despite efforts to stop it, deforestation of primary forests increased by 2.8% over the previous year, and several countries suffered record losses, mainly due to fires but also other causes. This is the case of Brazil, a country that accounted for a third of the loss of tropical primary forests in the world. Over the past year, forest loss due to deforestation for agricultural purposes and other land uses has increased rapidly in the Brazilian Amazon . “Fires due to natural causes are very rare in the Brazilian Amazon and other tropical rainforests. Fires often indicate previous deforestation: farmers and ranchers often set recently deforested soils on fire to clear them of branches and stumps. Fire also plays a role in agricultural cycles, so it is possible that land that has been deforested in the past is burned again to prepare it for new planting or to remove weeds from rangelands, ”the report says. .
In addition, the data from Brazil also indicate new points of very worrying deforestation, since they are within indigenous territories. In addition, a few months ago, the Brazilian administration proposed new legislation that would allow mining and extraction of oil and gas for commercial purposes within indigenous territories.
Fires in Bolivia and Australia
As a result of the forest fires, Bolivia suffered a very high rate of deforestation. The widespread fires of 2019 were the result of a combination of weather conditions and human activity. Many fires were probably started by people, as they do every year, to clear agricultural soils for planting, but due to persistent winds and dry weather they spread out of control into the forests.
The report does not collect the data for Australia, which is outside the tropical area, but a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change in February indicated that the fires of the summer of 2019-2020 wiped out 21% of temperate forests from the country.
In addition to deforestation for agricultural uses, climate change is also contributing to intensify fire seasons around the world.
Data for hope
On the other hand, the report also shows data from some countries in which the trend of tree cover loss is decreasing. This is the case of Indonesia, whose loss of primary forests fell by 5% compared to 2018, a downward trend that continues for the third consecutive year.
West Africa experienced promising downward trends after a large increase in the loss of primary forests last year. Compared to the previous year, Ghana and the Ivory Coast reduced the loss of primary forests by more than 50% in 2019.
The Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations contemplate the protection and sustainable management of forests, since these, “in addition to providing food security and shelter, are essential to combat climate change, protect biological diversity and people’s homes indigenous. By protecting forests, we will also be able to strengthen the management of natural resources and increase the productivity of the land ”.
