Massive fires fueled by climate change led global forest loss to smash records in 2024, according to a report issued on Wednesday.
Loss of tropical pristine forests alone reached 6.7 million hectares (16.6 million acres), an 80% spike compared to 2023 and an area roughly the size of Panama, mainly because Brazil, the host of the next global climate summit in November, struggled to contain fires in the Amazon amid the worst drought ever recorded in the rainforest. A myriad of other countries, including Bolivia and Canada, were also ravaged by wildfires.
It was the first time the annual report, issued by the World Resources Institute and the University of Maryland, showed fires as the leading cause of tropical forest loss, a grim milestone for a naturally humid ecosystem that is not supposed to burn, Reuters reported.
"The signals in these data are particularly frightening," said Matthew Hansen, the co-director of a lab at the University of Maryland that compiled and analyzed the data. "The fear is that the climate signal is going to overtake our ability to respond effectively."
Latin America was hit particularly hard, the report said, with the Amazon biome hitting its highest level of primary forest loss since 2016.
Brazil, which holds the largest share of the world's tropical forests, lost 2.8 million hectares (6.9 million acres), the most of any country. It was a reversal of the progress made in 2023 when President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took office promising to protect the world's largest rainforest.
“This was unprecedented, which means we have to adapt all our policy to a new reality,” said Andre Lima, who oversees deforestation control policies for Brazil’s Ministry of Environment, adding that fire, which was never among the leading causes of forest loss, is now a top priority for the government.
Bolivia overtook the Democratic Republic of Congo as the second country with the most tropical forest loss despite having less than half the amount of forest as the African nation, which also saw a spike in forest loss last year.
Bolivia's forest loss surged by 200% in 2024, with a drought, wildfires and a government-incentivized agricultural expansion as the leading causes. Across Latin America, the report noted similar trends in Mexico, Peru, Nicaragua, and Guatemala.
Conflicts in Colombia and the Democratic Republic of Congo also boosted deforestation rates, as armed groups used up natural resources.
Outside the tropics, boreal forests, which evolved with seasonal fires, also posted record-high tree loss in 2024, with Canada and Russia each losing 5.2 million hectares (12.8 million acres) in 2024 as wildfires got out of control.
Southeast Asia bucked the global trend with Malaysia, Laos, and Indonesia all posting double-digit decreases in primary forest loss, as domestic conservation policy, combined with efforts by communities and the private sector, continued to effectively contain fires and agricultural expansion.
Another outlier was the Charagua Iyambae Indigenous territory in southern Bolivia, which was able to keep the country's record fires at bay through land-use policies and early warning systems.
Rod Taylor, the global director for forests at the WRI, said that as leaders descend on the Amazonian city of Belem for the next climate summit, he would like to see countries make progress in introducing better funding mechanisms for conservation.
"At the moment," he said, "there's more money to be paid by chopping forests down than keeping them standing."
