World Resources Institute Report | Forests continue to shrink across the globe

Despite its importance in combating global warming and protecting biodiversity, forest cover is losing ground all over the world, notes once again the World Resources Institute. Canada also finds itself in this sad situation due to the record forest fires of 2023.

Ten football fields per minute

Primary tropical forests lost 3.7 million hectares in 2023, down 9% from the previous year. Despite less significant deforestation compared to 2022, this nevertheless represents the equivalent of the disappearance of 10 football fields per minute, reports the most recent report from the World Resources Institute prepared by researchers at the University of Maryland. This loss resulted in emissions of 2.4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere, or almost half of the United States’ annual emissions, researchers estimate. Note that 96% of deforestation worldwide occurs in tropical forests.

The case of Canada

On a global scale, deforestation is often attributable to the transformation of forests into agricultural areas, as is the case in Brazil, for example. But year after year, fires in the boreal forest weigh down the global toll. In 2023, Canada lost 8.6 million hectares of forest, more than 90% of which was due to a record fire season, points out the World Resources Institute. However, these figures must be taken with a grain of salt, since losses following a forest fire are not necessarily permanent, as noted by Yan Boulanger, forest ecology researcher at Natural Resources Canada.

Brazil is improving

Brazil, accustomed to this sad record, performed better in 2023. Deforestation there fell by 36% in one year, a period coinciding with the return to power of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. President Lula has in fact canceled the policies of his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, favorable to deforestation. Rare good news as the Amazon rainforest could pass “a breaking point” by 2050, according to a study published in the journal Nature last February. Episodes of drought, fires and deforestation could cause permanent disruption to half of the Amazon rainforest, Brazilian researchers have estimated.

Small increases that add up

While Brazil and Colombia were able to observe a decline in deforestation within their borders, several countries experienced significant increases, including Bolivia (+27%) and Laos (+47%). One of the most worrying regions remains the Democratic Republic of Congo, recall researchers from the University of Maryland. Deforestation increased by only 3% in 2023, but the “small increases, regular for several years, add up to each other” in a region that is home to “the last great tropical forest that is still a carbon sink », we note.

Broken promises?

In 2021, 145 countries committed at COP26, in Glasgow, Scotland, to end deforestation by 2030. A promise that may not come true, specifies the World Resources Institute (WRI). “The world took two steps forward and two steps back in forest loss last year,” said Mikaela Weisse, director of the Global Forest Observatory at WRI. Sharp declines in the Brazilian Amazon and Colombia show that progress is possible, but increasing forest loss in other regions has largely thwarted progress. We need to learn from countries that are successfully slowing deforestation. »

Read the World Resources Institute report