STATE OF THE RAINFOREST 2014
4
Reducing deforestation is urgent.
Destruction of the rainforest and other tropical forests continue on a
dramaticscale inspiteof unprecedentedglobal attention to the issue
of deforestation and the role of forests in mitigating greenhouse
gas emissions. The global figures for deforestation are contested:
Two main sources of data, the FAO’s Global Forest Resources
Assessment (2010) and a remote sensing study by University of
Maryland (2013), use different technologies and definitions of
forest and display huge variation between figures (see section 2).
We simply don’t know how much rainforest is left on Earth, and how
fast it disappears. Both sources agree, however, that tropical forests
are being destroyed at an alarming rate. According to the FAO,
130 000 km
2
of the world’s forests are lost every year, the majority in
the tropics. Simultaneously, the University of Maryland calculates
the annual loss of tropical forest to be 92 000 km
2
. According to the
latter, 1.1 million km
2
(three times the size of Norway) have been
lost from 2000 to 2012. Dense tropical rainforests once covered
around 18 million km
2
of Earth, but is now reduced to half of this
size. Most of this forest was lost during the last 50–60 years, and
rapid deforestation continues. Except for Brazil, which has reduced
deforestation at a globally significant scale, other countries have
not managed to show similar positive results on the ground – in the
forest – in spite of political commitments.
Extensive degradation of tropical forests around the globe
aggravates the problem. Intact, primary rainforests are through
various forms of destructive activity transformed into secondary
forests, which undermines the forests’ health and ability to deliver
ecosystem services – even if the forest cover may remain. There is
a serious lack of political attention to this phenomenon, and data
on the extent of forest degradation are even more scattered and
unreliable than those on tropical deforestation.
Tropical rainforests are crucial for reaching
international development goals.
The forest’s ecosystem services and resources are essential for
poverty alleviation, long-term food security and for solving the
global environmental crises of biodiversity loss and climate change.
We have known for a long time that tropical rainforests are extremely
valuable, not least as habitat for half of the world’s terrestrial
species, but new and ongoing research continues to widen our
understanding of the extent and importance of tropical forests
for local and global development. The role of tropical forests for
climate regulation, rainfall patterns and availability of freshwater,
the connection between forest biodiversity, food security and
agricultural production, and their importance for the livelihood and
cultural survival of indigenous peoples and other local communities
all underscore that protection and sustainable use of the world’s
tropical rainforests need to be given much higher priority within
international and national development strategies.
Low deforestation development is possible …
The fact that deforestation trends are not uniform gives room
for some optimism. There are variations across regions which
clearly show that deforestation is not a necessary consequence of
economic development. It is a question of political will and choice
of economic strategy. The very encouraging development in Brazil,
where Amazon deforestation has been reduced by three quarters
– to 26 percent of the annual average between 1996 and 2005 –
is the direct result of political decisions and demonstrates that
forest protection is compatible with national economic growth and
social development. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC),
deforestation rates have been relatively stable. This is in itself
positive, as most observers feared a steep increase after the end
of the second Congo war in 2003. Even in Indonesia, where more
rainforest is being lost than in any other country, political attention
and incipient policy change represent significant steps forward. At
the international level, we see governments discussing measures
and private sector corporations adopting no-deforestation policies
to an extent that would have been considered totally unrealistic a
few years back.
… but the necessary changes are complex.
The direct and indirect causes behind the destruction of the
rainforest are many and varied. Small-scale agriculture contributes
towards deforestation on all rainforest continents, emerging as an
important factor especially where deforestation rates are relatively
low. The massive deforestation that has ravaged the Amazon and
Southeast Asia over the last five decades is caused by large-scale
actors, and illegality and crime play an important part.
Some 80% of all deforestation in South America from 1990 to 2000
was caused by cattle ranching and industrial scale agriculture.
Explosive growth in plantations, increasing exploitation of forest
areas for mining, infrastructure development, as well as both
legal and widespread illegal logging is taking place in Papua New
Guinea (PNG), Indonesia, and other countries in Southeast Asia
and Oceania. Driving the development is a complex web of illegal
and legal activities, legitimate political decisions intertwined with
pervasive corruption and illegal resource extraction and trade.
Findings and main messages
