Humans Destroy Two-Thirds of World's Rainforests

An aerial view of a tract of Amazon jungle after it was cleared by farmers in Itaituba, Para, Brazil, Sept. 26, 2019. (Reuters Photo)

Humans have degraded or destroyed roughly two-thirds of the world's original tropical rainforest cover, new data reveals – raising alarm that a key natural buffer against climate change is quickly vanishing.

According to Reuters, the forest loss is also a major contributor of climate-warming emissions, with the dense tropical forest vegetation representing the largest living reservoir of carbon.

Logging and land conversion, mainly for agriculture, have wiped out 34 percent of the world's original old-growth tropical rainforests, and degraded another 30 percent, leaving them more vulnerable to fire and future destruction, according to an analysis by the non-profit Rainforest Foundation Norway.

More than half of the destruction since 2002 has been in South America's Amazon and bordering rainforests.

As more rainforest is destroyed, there is more potential for climate change, which in turn makes it more difficult for remaining forests to survive, said the report's author Anders Krogh, a tropical forest researcher. "It's a terrifying cycle," Krogh said. The total lost between just 2002 and 2019 was larger than the area of France, he found.

The rate of loss in 2019 roughly matched the annual level of destruction over the last 20 years, with a football field's worth of forest vanishing every six seconds, according to another recent report by the World Resources Institute.

The Brazilian Amazon has been under intense pressure in recent decades, as an agricultural boom has driven farmers and land speculators to torch plots of land for soybeans, beef and other crops.

That trend has worsened since 2019, when right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro took office and began weakening environmental enforcement.

But the Amazon also represents the best hope for preserving what rainforest remains.

The Amazon and its neighbors account for 73.5 percent of tropical forests still intact, according to Krogh. Southeast Asian islands, mostly belonging to Indonesia, collectively rank second in terms of forest destruction since 2002, with much of those forests cleared for palm oil plantations.

Central Africa ranks third, with most of the destruction centered around the Congo River basin, due to traditional and commercial farming as well as logging.