Deforestation

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Conversion of forest to non-forest for human use

"Forest clearing" redirects here. For a gap in a forest, see Glade (geography).

Deforestation in New Zealand

.

wilderness areas were lost between 1990 and 2015.^[1]

Forest Landscape Integrity Index showing anthropogenic modification of remaining forest.^[2]

Annual deforestation

Annual change in forest area

Deforestation or forest clearance is the removal of a

hectares of forest, an area the size of Bangladesh, are destroyed every year. On average 2,400 trees are cut down each minute.^[7]

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations defines deforestation as the conversion of forest to other land uses (regardless of whether it is human-induced). "Deforestation" and "forest area net change" are not the same: the latter is the sum of all forest losses (deforestation) and all forest gains (forest expansion) in a given period. Net change, therefore, can be positive or negative, depending on whether gains exceed losses, or vice versa.^[8]

The removal of trees without sufficient

Global warming also puts increased pressure on communities who seek food security by clearing forests for agricultural use and reducing arable land more generally. Deforested regions typically incur significant other environmental effects such as adverse soil erosion and degradation into wasteland

.

The resilience of human food systems and their capacity to adapt to future change is linked to biodiversity – including dryland-adapted shrub and tree species that help combat desertification, forest-dwelling insects, bats and bird species that pollinate crops, trees with extensive root systems in

mountain ecosystems that prevent soil erosion, and mangrove species that provide resilience against flooding in coastal areas.^[10] With climate change exacerbating the risks to food systems, the role of forests in capturing and storing carbon and mitigating climate change is important for the agricultural sector.^[10]

Recent history (1970 onwards)

Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil's Maranhão

state, 2016

The FAO estimates that the global forest carbon stock has decreased 0.9%, and tree cover 4.2% between 1990 and 2020.[11] The forest carbon stock in Europe (including Russia) increased from 158.7 to 172.4 Gt between 1990 and 2020. In North America, the forest carbon stock increased from 136.6 to 140 Gt in the same period. However, carbon stock decreased from 94.3 to 80.9 Gt in Africa, 45.8 to 41.5 Gt in South and Southeast Asia combined, 33.4 to 33.1 Gt in Oceania, 5 to 4.1 Gt in Central America, and from 161.8 to 144.8 Gt in South America.^[12] The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) states that there is disagreement about whether the global forest is shrinking or not, and quote research indicating that tree cover has increased 7.1% between 1982 and 2016.^[a] IPCC also writes: "While above-ground biomass carbon stocks are estimated to be declining in the tropics, they are increasing globally due to increasing stocks in temperate and boreal forest.^[13]

Agricultural expansion continues to be the main driver of deforestation and forest fragmentation and the associated loss of forest biodiversity.

loss of biodiversity.^[10]

The amount of globally needed agricultural land would be reduced by three quarters if the entire population adopted a vegan diet.^[18]

Deforestation is more extreme in tropical and subtropical forests in emerging economies. More than half of all plant and land animal species in the world live in

Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020 the global average annual deforested land in the 2015–2020 demi-decade was 10 million hectares and the average annual forest area net loss in the 2000–2010 decade was 4.7 million hectares.^[8] The world has lost 178 million ha of forest since 1990, which is an area about the size of Libya.^[8]

According to a 2020 study published in Scientific Reports, if deforestation continues at current rates it can trigger a total or almost total extinction of humanity in the next 20 to 40 years. They conclude that "from a statistical point of view . . . the probability that our civilisation survives itself is less than 10% in the most optimistic scenario." To avoid this collapse, humanity should pass from a civilization dominated by the economy to "cultural society" that "privileges the interest of the ecosystem above the individual interest of its components, but eventually in accordance with the overall communal interest."^[28][29]

In 2014, about 40 countries signed the

tree cover) agreed at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow to the Glasgow Leaders' Declaration on Forests and Land Use, a pledge to end and reverse deforestation by 2030.^[31][32][33] The agreement was accompanied by about $19.2 billion in associated funding commitments.^[32] The 2021 Glasgow agreement improved on the New York Declaration by now including Brazil and many other countries that did not sign the 2014 agreement.^[31][32] Some key nations with high rates of deforestation (including Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos, Paraguay, and Myanmar) have not signed the Glasgow Declaration.^[32] Like the earlier agreement, the Glasgow Leaders' Declaration was entered into outside the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and is thus not legally binding.^[32] In November 2021, the EU executive outlined a draft law requiring companies to prove that the agricultural commodities beef, wood, palm oil, soy, coffee and cocoa destined for the EU's 450 million consumers were not linked to deforestation.^[34] In September 2022, the EU Parliament supported and strengthened the plan from the EU’s executive with 453 votes to 57.^[35]

Causes

Drivers of deforestation and forest degradation by region, 2000–2010, from FAO publication The State of the World's Forests 2020. Forests, biodiversity and people – In brief.^[36]

Drivers of tropical deforestration

Indragiri Hulu, Sumatra, Indonesia. Deforestation for oil palm

plantation.

Experts do not agree on whether industrial logging is an important contributor to global deforestation.[38]^[39] Some argue that poor people are more likely to clear forest because they have no alternatives, others that the poor lack the ability to pay for the materials and labour needed to clear forest.^[38]

Other causes of contemporary deforestation may include corruption of government institutions,^[40][41][42] the inequitable distribution of wealth and power,^[43] population growth^[44] and overpopulation,^[45][46] and urbanization.^[47][48] The impact of population growth on deforestation has been contested. One study found that population increases due to high fertility rates were a primary driver of tropical deforestation in only 8% of cases.^[49] In 2000 the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) found that "the role of population dynamics in a local setting may vary from decisive to negligible", and that deforestation can result from "a combination of population pressure and stagnating economic, social and technological conditions".^[44]

Globalization is often viewed as another root cause of deforestation,^[50][51] though there are cases in which the impacts of globalization (new flows of labor, capital, commodities, and ideas) have promoted localized forest recovery.^[52]

Another cause of deforestation is climate change. 23% of tree cover losses result from wildfires and climate change increase their frequency and power.

Illegal gold mining in Madre de Dios, Peru

.

The degradation of forest ecosystems has also been traced to economic incentives that make forest conversion appear more profitable than forest conservation.[56] Many important forest functions have no markets, and hence, no economic value that is readily apparent to the forests' owners or the communities that rely on forests for their well-being.^[56] From the perspective of the developing world, the benefits of forest as carbon sinks or biodiversity reserves go primarily to richer developed nations and there is insufficient compensation for these services. Developing countries feel that some countries in the developed world, such as the United States of America, cut down their forests centuries ago and benefited economically from this deforestation, and that it is hypocritical to deny developing countries the same opportunities, i.e. that the poor should not have to bear the cost of preservation when the rich created the problem.^[57]

Some commentators have noted a shift in the drivers of deforestation over the past 30 years.^[58] Whereas deforestation was primarily driven by subsistence activities and government-sponsored development projects like transmigration in countries like Indonesia and colonization in Latin America, India, Java, and so on, during the late 19th century and the earlier half of the 20th century, by the 1990s the majority of deforestation was caused by industrial factors, including extractive industries, large-scale cattle ranching, and extensive agriculture.^[59] Since 2001, commodity-driven deforestation, which is more likely to be permanent, has accounted for about a quarter of all forest disturbance, and this loss has been concentrated in South America and Southeast Asia.^[60]

The importance of mining as a cause of deforestation increased quickly in the beginning the 21st century, among other because of increased demand for minerals. The direct impact of mining is relatively small, but the indirect impacts are much more significant. More than a third of the earth's forests are possibly impacted, at some level and in the years 2001-2021, "755,861 km2... ...had been deforested by causes indirectly related to mining activities alongside other deforestation drivers (based on data from WWF)"^[61]

Environmental effects

Atmospheric

Biophysical mechanisms by which forests influence climate.^[62]

Per capita CO₂ emissions from deforestation for food production

Illegal "slash-and-burn" practice in Madagascar

, 2010

Mean annual carbon loss from tropical deforestation.^[63]

Deforestation is ongoing and is shaping climate and geography.^{[64][65][66][67]}

Deforestation is a contributor to

According to a review, north of 50°N, large scale deforestation leads to an overall net global cooling while tropical deforestation leads to substantial warming not just due to CO₂-impacts but also due to other biophysical mechanisms (making carbon-centric metrics inadequate). Moreover, it suggests that standing tropical forests help cool the average global temperature by more than 1 °C.[73]^[62]

A study suggests logged and structurally degraded tropical forests are carbon sources for at least a decade – even when recovering^{[clarification needed]} – due to larger carbon losses from soil organic matter and deadwood, indicating the tropical forest carbon sink (at least in South Asia) "may be much smaller than previously estimated", contradicting that "recovering logged and degraded tropical forests are net carbon sinks".^[74]

Mechanisms

Deforestation causes carbon dioxide to linger in the atmosphere. As carbon dioxide accrues, it produces a layer in the atmosphere that traps radiation from the sun. The radiation converts to heat which causes global warming, which is better known as the greenhouse effect.

In deforested areas, the land heats up faster and reaches a higher temperature, leading to localized upward motions that enhance the formation of clouds and ultimately produce more rainfall.[78] However, according to the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, the models used to investigate remote responses to tropical deforestation showed a broad but mild temperature increase all through the tropical atmosphere. The model predicted <0.2 °C warming for upper air at 700 mb and 500 mb. However, the model shows no significant changes in other areas besides the Tropics. Though the model showed no significant changes to the climate in areas other than the Tropics, this may not be the case since the model has possible errors and the results are never absolutely definite.^[79] Deforestation affects wind flows, water vapour flows and absorption of solar energy thus clearly influencing local and global climate.^[80]

Fires on Borneo and Sumatra, 2006. People use slash-and-burn

deforestation to clear land for agriculture.

Shrinking forest cover lessens the landscape's capacity to intercept, retain and transpire precipitation. Instead of trapping precipitation, which then percolates to groundwater systems, deforested areas become sources of surface water runoff, which moves much faster than subsurface flows. Forests return most of the water that falls as precipitation to the atmosphere by transpiration. In contrast, when an area is deforested, almost all precipitation is lost as run-off.^[90] That quicker transport of surface water can translate into flash flooding and more localized floods than would occur with the forest cover. Deforestation also contributes to decreased evapotranspiration, which lessens atmospheric moisture which in some cases affects precipitation levels downwind from the deforested area, as water is not recycled to downwind forests, but is lost in runoff and returns directly to the oceans. According to one study, in deforested north and northwest China, the average annual precipitation decreased by one third between the 1950s and the 1980s.^[91]

Deforestation of the Highland Plateau in Madagascar has led to extensive siltation

and unstable flows of western rivers.

Trees, and plants in general, affect the water cycle significantly:^[92]

• their canopies intercept a proportion of
  precipitation, which is then evaporated back to the atmosphere (canopy interception
  );
• their litter, stems and trunks slow down surface runoff;
• their roots create macropores – large conduits – in the soil that increase infiltration of water;
• they contribute to terrestrial evaporation and reduce soil moisture via transpiration;
• their litter and other organic residue change soil properties that affect the capacity of soil to store water.
• their leaves control the humidity of the atmosphere by transpiring. 99% of the water absorbed by the roots moves up to the leaves and is transpired.^[93]

As a result, the presence or absence of trees can change the quantity of water on the surface, in the soil or groundwater, or in the atmosphere. This in turn changes erosion rates and the availability of water for either ecosystem functions or human services. Deforestation on lowland plains moves cloud formation and rainfall to higher elevations.^[94]

The forest may have little impact on flooding in the case of large rainfall events, which overwhelm the storage capacity of forest soil if the soils are at or close to saturation.

Tropical rainforests produce about 30% of our planet's fresh water.^[82]

Deforestation disrupts normal weather patterns creating hotter and drier weather thus increasing drought, desertification, crop failures, melting of the polar ice caps, coastal flooding and displacement of major vegetation regimes.^[95]

Soil

Deforestation in France

.

Deforestation in China's Loess Plateau many years ago has led to soil erosion; this erosion has led to valleys opening up. The increase of soil in the runoff causes the Yellow River to flood and makes it yellow colored.[97]

Greater erosion is not always a consequence of deforestation, as observed in the southwestern regions of the US. In these areas, the loss of grass due to the presence of trees and other shrubbery leads to more erosion than when trees are removed.^[97]

Soils are reinforced by the presence of trees, which secure the soil by binding their roots to soil bedrock. Due to deforestation, the removal of trees causes sloped lands to be more susceptible to landslides.^[92]

Biodiversity

Deforestation on a human scale results in decline in biodiversity,^[98] and on a natural global scale is known to cause the extinction of many species.^[9][99] The removal or destruction of areas of forest cover has resulted in a degraded environment with reduced biodiversity.^[46] Forests support biodiversity, providing habitat for wildlife;^[100] moreover, forests foster medicinal conservation.^[101] With forest biotopes being irreplaceable source of new drugs (such as taxol), deforestation can destroy genetic variations (such as crop resistance) irretrievably.^[102]

Illegal logging in Madagascar. In 2009, the vast majority of the illegally obtained rosewood was exported to China

.

Location of tropical (dark green) and temperate/subtropical (light green) rainforests

in the world

In 2012, a study of the Brazilian Amazon predicts that despite a lack of extinctions thus far, up to 90 percent of predicted extinctions will finally occur in the next 40 years.[117]

Health effects

Public health context

The degradation and loss of forests disrupts nature's balance.^[10] Indeed, deforestation eliminates a great number of species of plants and animals which also often results in an increase in disease,^[118] and exposure of people to zoonotic diseases.^{[10][119][120][121]} Deforestation can also create a path for non-native species to flourish such as certain types of snails, which have been correlated with an increase in schistosomiasis cases.^[118][122]

Forest-associated diseases include malaria, Chagas disease (also known as American trypanosomiasis), African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness), leishmaniasis, Lyme disease, HIV and Ebola.^[10] The majority of new infectious diseases affecting humans, including the SARS-CoV2 virus that caused the current COVID-19 pandemic, are zoonotic and their emergence may be linked to habitat loss due to forest area change and the expansion of human populations into forest areas, which both increase human exposure to wildlife.^[10]

Deforestation is occurring all over the world and has been coupled with an increase in the occurrence of disease outbreaks. In

Another pathway through which deforestation affects disease is the relocation and dispersion of disease-carrying hosts. This disease emergence pathway can be called "range expansion", whereby the host's range (and thereby the range of pathogens) expands to new geographic areas.^[127] Through deforestation, hosts and reservoir species are forced into neighboring habitats. Accompanying the reservoir species are pathogens that have the ability to find new hosts in previously unexposed regions. As these pathogens and species come into closer contact with humans, they are infected both directly and indirectly.

A catastrophic example of range expansion is the 1998 outbreak of Nipah virus in Malaysia.^[128] For a number of years, deforestation, drought, and subsequent fires led to a dramatic geographic shift and density of fruit bats, a reservoir for Nipah virus.^[129] Deforestation reduced the available fruiting trees in the bats' habitat, and they encroached on surrounding orchards which also happened to be the location of a large number of pigsties. The bats, through proximity spread the Nipah to pigs. While the virus infected the pigs, mortality was much lower than among humans, making the pigs a virulent host leading to the transmission of the virus to humans. This resulted in 265 reported cases of encephalitis, of which 105 resulted in death. This example provides an important lesson for the impact deforestation can have on human health.

Another example of range expansion due to deforestation and other anthropogenic habitat impacts includes the Capybara rodent in Paraguay.^[130] This rodent is the host of a number of zoonotic diseases and, while there has not yet been a human-borne outbreak due to the movement of this rodent into new regions, it offers an example of how habitat destruction through deforestation and subsequent movements of species is occurring regularly.

A now well-developed and widely accepted theory is that the spillover of HIV from chimpanzees was at least partially due to deforestation. Rising populations created a food demand, and with deforestation opening up new areas of the forest, hunters harvested a great deal of primate bushmeat, which is believed to be the origin of HIV.^[118]

Research in Indonesia has found that outdoor workers who worked in tropical and deforested instead of tropical and naturally forested areas experienced cognitive and memory impairments which appear to be caused primarily by exposure to high heat which trees would have protected them from.^[131] Deforestation reduces safe working hours for millions of people in the tropics, especially for those performing heavy labour outdoors. Continued global heating and forest loss is expected to amplify these impacts, reducing work hours for vulnerable groups even more.^[132]

General overview

According to the World Economic Forum, 31% of emerging diseases are linked to deforestation.^[133]

According to the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 75% of emerging diseases in humans came from animals. The rising number of outbreaks is probably linked to habitat and biodiversity loss. In response, scientists created a new discipline, planetary health, which posits that the health of the ecosystems and the health of humans are linked.^[134] In 2015, the Rockefeller Foundation and The Lancet launched the concept as the Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission on Planetary Health.^[135]

Since the 1980s, every decade has seen the number of new diseases in humans increase more than threefold. According to a major study by American and Australian scientists, degradation of ecosystems increases the risk of new outbreaks. The diseases that passed to humans in this way in the latest decades include

In 2016, the United Nations Environment Programme published the UNEP Frontiers 2016 Report. In this report, the second chapter was dedicated to zoonotic diseases, that is diseases that pass from animals to humans. This chapter stated that deforestation, climate change, and livestock agriculture are among the main causes that increase the risk of such diseases. It mentioned that every four months, a new disease is discovered in humans. It is said that outbreaks that already happened (as of 2016) led to loss of lives and financial losses of billions dollars and if future diseases become pandemics it will cost trillions of dollars.^[137]

The report presents the causes of the emerging diseases, a large part of them environmental:

On page 23 of the report are presented some of the latest emerging diseases and the definite environmental cause of them:

HIV/AIDS

Malaria, which killed 405,000 people in 2018,^[143] is probably linked to deforestation. When humans change dramatically the ecological system the diversity in mosquito species is reduced and: ""The species that survive and become dominant, for reasons that are not well understood, almost always transmit malaria better than the species that had been most abundant in the intact forests", write Eric Chivian and Aaron Bernstein, public health experts at Harvard Medical School, in their book How Our Health Depends on Biodiversity. "This has been observed essentially everywhere malaria occurs".

Some of the reasons for this connection, found by scientists in the latest years:

• When there is less shadow of the trees, the temperature of the water is higher which benefits
  mosquitos
  .
• When the trees don't consume water, there is more water on the ground, which also benefits mosquitos.
• Low lying vegetation is better for the species of mosquitos that transmit the disease.
• When there is no forest there is less tannin in water. Than the water is less acidic and more turbid, what is better for some species of mosquitos.
• The mosquitos that live in deforested areas are better at carrying malaria.
• Another reason is that when a large part of a forest is destroyed, the animals are crowded in the remaining fragments in higher density, which facilitate the spread of the virus between them. This leads to a bigger number of cases between animals which increase the likelihood of transmission to humans.

Consequently, the same type of mosquito bites 278 times more often in deforested areas. According to one study in Brazil, cutting of 4% of the forest, led to a 50% increase in Malaria cases. In one region in Peru the number of cases per year, jumped from 600 to 120,000 after people begun to cut forests.^[140]

Coronavirus disease 2019

In April 2020, United Nations Environment Programme published 2 short videos explaining the link between nature destruction, wildlife trade and the COVID-19 pandemic^[145][146] and created a section on its site dedicated to the issue.^[147]

The World Economic Forum published a call to involve nature recovery in the recovery efforts from the COVID-19 pandemic saying that this outbreak is linked to the destruction of the natural world.^[148]

In May 2020, a group of experts from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services published an article saying that humans are the species responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic because it is linked to nature destruction and more severe epidemics might occur if humanity will not change direction. It calls to "strengthen environmental regulations; adopt a 'One Health' approach to decision-making that recognizes complex interconnections among the health of people, animals, plants, and our shared environment; and prop up health care systems in the most vulnerable countries where resources are strained and underfunded", which can prevent future epidemics and therefore is in the interest of all. The call was published on the site of the World Economic Forum.^[149]

According to the

In June 2020, a scientific unit of Greenpeace with University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) published a report saying that the rise of zoonotic diseases, including coronavirus is directly linked to deforestation because it change the interaction between people and animals and reduce the amount of water necessary for hygiene and diseases treatment.^[151][152]

Experts say that anthropogenic deforestation, habitat loss and destruction of biodiversity may be linked to outbreaks like the COVID-19 pandemic in several ways:

• Bringing people and domestic animals in contact with a species of animals and plants that were not contacted by them before. Kate Jones, chair of ecology and biodiversity at University College London, says the disruption of pristine forests, driven by logging, mining, road building through remote places, rapid urbanisation and population growth is bringing people into closer contact with animal species they may never have been near before, resulting in transmission of new zoonotic diseases from wildlife to humans.
• Creating degraded habitats. Such habitats with a few species are more likely to cause a transmission of zoonotic viruses to humans.
• Creating more crowded habitats, with more dense population.
• Habitat loss prompts animals to search for a new one, which often results in mixing with humans and other animals.
• Disruption of ecosystems can increase the number of animals that carry many viruses, like bats and rodents. It can increase the number of mice and rats by reducing the populations of predators. Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest increases the likelihood of malaria because the deforested area is ideal for mosquitoes.^[148]
• Animal trade, by killing and transporting live and dead animals very long distances. According to American science journalist David Quammen, "We cut the trees; we kill the animals or cage them and send them to markets. We disrupt ecosystems, and we shake viruses loose from their natural hosts. When that happens, they need a new host. Often, we are it."^[134][136]

When climate change or deforestation causes a virus to pass to another host it becomes more dangerous. This is because viruses generally learn to coexist with their host and become virulent when they pass to another.^[153]

Economic impact

A satellite image showing deforestation for a palm oil plantation

in Malaysia

This section needs to be updated. The reason given is: cites are very old. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (June 2020)

The new procedures to get amounts of wood are causing more harm to the economy and overpower the amount of money spent by people employed in logging.[157] According to a study, "in most areas studied, the various ventures that prompted deforestation rarely generated more than US$5 for every ton of carbon they released and frequently returned far less than US$1". The price on the European market for an offset tied to a one-ton reduction in carbon is 23 euro (about US$35).^[158]

Rapidly growing economies also have an effect on deforestation. Most pressure will come from the world's developing countries, which have the fastest-growing populations and most rapid economic (industrial) growth.^[159] In 1995, economic growth in developing countries reached nearly 6%, compared with the 2% growth rate for developed countries.^[159] As the human population grows, new homes, communities, and expansions of cities will occur, leading to an increase in roads to connect these communities. Rural roads promote economic development but also facilitate deforestation.^[159] About 90% of the deforestation has occurred within 100 km of roads in most parts of the Amazon.^[160]

The European Union is one of the largest importer of products made from illegal deforestation.^[161]

Forest transition theory

The forest area change may follow a pattern suggested by the forest transition (FT) theory,^[162] whereby at early stages in its development a country is characterized by high forest cover and low deforestation rates (HFLD countries).^[59]

Then deforestation rates accelerate (HFHD, high forest cover – high deforestation rate), and forest cover is reduced (LFHD, low forest cover – high deforestation rate), before the deforestation rate slows (LFLD, low forest cover – low deforestation rate), after which forest cover stabilizes and eventually starts recovering. FT is not a "law of nature", and the pattern is influenced by national context (for example, human population density, stage of development, structure of the economy), global economic forces, and government policies. A country may reach very low levels of forest cover before it stabilizes, or it might through good policies be able to "bridge" the forest transition.^{[citation needed]}

FT depicts a broad trend, and an extrapolation of historical rates therefore tends to underestimate future BAU deforestation for countries in the early stages of the transition (HFLD), while it tends to overestimate BAU deforestation for countries in the later stages (LFHD and LFLD).

Countries with high forest cover can be expected to be at early stages of the FT. GDP per capita captures the stage in a country's economic development, which is linked to the pattern of natural resource use, including forests. The choice of forest cover and GDP per capita also fits well with the two key scenarios in the FT:

(i) a forest scarcity path, where forest scarcity triggers forces (for example, higher prices of forest products) that lead to forest cover stabilization; and

(ii) an economic development path, where new and better off-farm employment opportunities associated with economic growth (= increasing GDP per capita) reduce the profitability of frontier agriculture and slows deforestation.^[59]

Historical causes

Prehistory

The

An array of Neolithic artifacts, including bracelets, ax heads, chisels, and polishing tools.

Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth's land surface; now they cover a mere 6% and experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years.[164] Small scale deforestation was practiced by some societies for tens of thousands of years before the beginnings of civilization.

Easter Island, deforested. According to Jared Diamond: "Among past societies faced with the prospect of ruinous deforestation, Easter Island and Mangareva chiefs succumbed to their immediate concerns, but Tokugawa shoguns, Inca emperors, New Guinea highlanders, and 16th century German landowners adopted a long view and reafforested."^[170]

Just as archaeologists have shown that prehistoric farming societies had to cut or burn forests before planting, documents and artifacts from early civilizations often reveal histories of deforestation. Some of the most dramatic are eighth century BCE Assyrian reliefs depicting logs being floated downstream from conquered areas to the less forested capital region as spoils of war. Ancient Chinese texts make clear that some areas of the Yellow River valley had already destroyed many of their forests over 2000 years ago and had to plant trees as crops or import them from long distances.^[171] In South China much of the land came to be privately owned and used for the commercial growing of timber.^[172]

Three regional studies of historic erosion and alluviation in

The famous silting up of the harbor for Bruges, which moved port commerce to Antwerp, also followed a period of increased settlement growth (and apparently of deforestation) in the upper river basins. In early medieval Riez in upper Provence, alluvial silt from two small rivers raised the riverbeds and widened the floodplain, which slowly buried the Roman settlement in alluvium and gradually moved new construction to higher ground; concurrently the headwater valleys above Riez were being opened to pasturage.^[179]

A typical

Deforestation of Brazil's Atlantic Forest

c. 1820–1825

With most of the population remaining active in (or indirectly dependent on) the agricultural sector, the main pressure in most areas remained land clearing for crop and cattle farming. Enough wild green was usually left standing (and partially used, for example, to collect firewood, timber and fruits, or to graze pigs) for wildlife to remain viable. The elite's (nobility and higher clergy) protection of their own hunting privileges and game often protected significant woodland.^[181]

Major parts in the spread (and thus more durable growth) of the population were played by monastical 'pioneering' (especially by the

Deforestation in Suriname

c. 1880–1900

In Changes in the Land (1983), William Cronon analyzed and documented 17th-century English colonists' reports of increased seasonal flooding in New England during the period when new settlers initially cleared the forests for agriculture. They believed flooding was linked to widespread forest clearing upstream.

The massive use of

In

At dead of night

The mother who begot the tree
And the mother of all giant trees,
The queen of the hill-range
And the mistress of the gorges
Took the tall and graceful tree
To her bosom and wailed:
"O my son, tall and big,
While yet an infant, a sapling
Didn't I tell you
To be an ordinary tree?

The king's men have found you out
And bought your life with gold and silver.
* * At daybreak, hacked at the trunk
You will be found lying prostrate.
No longer will you respond To your mother's call
Nor a likeness of you
Shall be found, when I survey
The whole hillside.

Who shall now relieve my grief?"

— Hijan Hirao^{[191][192][193]}

Industrial era

Tropical deforestation, 1700–2004 (percent loss)^[194]

Deforestation in Myanmar during the British colonial era

.

Estimates vary widely as to the extent of tropical deforestation.[196]^[197]

Present-day

In 2019, the world lost nearly 12 million hectares of tree cover. Nearly a third of that loss, 3.8 million hectares, occurred within humid tropical primary forests, areas of mature rainforest that are especially important for biodiversity and carbon storage. That's the equivalent of losing an area of primary forest the size of a football pitch every six seconds.^[198][199]

History

Global deforestation[200] sharply accelerated around 1852.^[201][202] As of 1947, the planet had 15 million to 16 million km² (5.8 million to 6.2 million sq mi) of mature tropical forests,^[203] but by 2015, it was estimated that about half of these had been destroyed.^{[204][19][205]} Total land coverage by tropical rainforests decreased from 14% to 6%. Much of this loss happened between 1960 and 1990, when 20% of all tropical rainforests were destroyed. At this rate, extinction of such forests is projected to occur by the mid-21st century.^[163]

In the early 2000s, some scientists predicted that unless significant measures (such as seeking out and protecting old growth forests that have not been disturbed)

Global annual forest area net change, by decade, 1990–2020^[207]

The rate of global tree cover loss has approximately doubled since 2001, to an annual loss approaching an area the size of Italy.^[208]

A 2002 analysis of satellite imagery suggested that the rate of deforestation in the humid tropics (approximately 5.8 million hectares per year) was roughly 23% lower than the most commonly quoted rates.[209] A 2005 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated that although the Earth's total forest area continued to decrease at about 13 million hectares per year, the global rate of deforestation had been slowing.^[210][211] On the other hand, a 2005 analysis of satellite images reveals that deforestation of the Amazon rainforest is twice as fast as scientists previously estimated.^[212][213]

From 2010 to 2015, worldwide forest area decreased by 3.3 million ha per year, according to FAO. During this five-year period, the biggest forest area loss occurred in the tropics, particularly in South America and Africa. Per capita forest area decline was also greatest in the tropics and subtropics but is occurring in every climatic domain (except in the temperate) as populations increase.^[214]

An estimated 420 million ha of forest has been lost worldwide through deforestation since 1990, but the rate of forest loss has declined substantially. In the most recent five-year period (2015–2020), the annual rate of deforestation was estimated at 10 million ha, down from 12 million ha in 2010–2015.^[8]

Home to much of the Amazon rainforest, Brazil's tropical primary (old-growth) forest loss greatly exceeds that of other countries.^[215]

Overall, 20% of the Amazon rainforest has been "transformed" (deforested) and another 6% has been "highly degraded", causing Amazon Watch to warn that the Amazonia is in the midst of a tipping point crisis.^[216]

Africa had the largest annual rate of net forest loss in 2010–2020, at 3.9 million ha, followed by South America, at 2.6 million ha. The rate of net forest loss has increased in Africa in each of the three decades since 1990. It has declined substantially in South America, however, to about half the rate in 2010–2020 compared with 2000–2010. Asia had the highest net gain of forest area in 2010–2020, followed by Oceania and Europe. Nevertheless, both Europe and Asia recorded substantially lower rates of net gain in 2010–2020 than in 2000–2010. Oceania experienced net losses of forest area in the decades 1990–2000 and 2000–2010.[8]

Some claim that rainforests are being destroyed at an ever-quickening pace.^[217] The London-based Rainforest Foundation notes that "the UN figure is based on a definition of forest as being an area with as little as 10% actual tree cover, which would therefore include areas that are actually savanna-like ecosystems and badly damaged forests".^[218] Other critics of the FAO data point out that they do not distinguish between forest types,^[219] and that they are based largely on reporting from forestry departments of individual countries,^[220] which do not take into account unofficial activities like illegal logging.^[221] Despite these uncertainties, there is agreement that destruction of rainforests remains a significant environmental problem.

Methods of analysis

Some have argued that deforestation trends may follow a

Some cartographers have attempted to illustrate the sheer scale of deforestation by country using a cartogram.^[225]

Satellite image of Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic (right) shows the amount of deforestation on the Haitian side

Deforestation around Pakke Tiger Reserve, India

Rates of deforestation vary around the world.

Up to 90% of West Africa's coastal rainforests have disappeared since 1900.^[226] Madagascar has lost 90% of its eastern rainforests.^[227][228]

In South Asia, about 88% of the rainforests have been lost.^[229]

Mexico, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Bangladesh, China, Sri Lanka, Laos, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Guinea, Ghana and the Ivory Coast, have lost large areas of their rainforest.^[230][231]