deforestation

May 25 2013: Sumatra’s rainforest will mostly disappear within 20 years. Official figures show more than half of Indonesia’s of rainforest, the third-largest swath in the world, has been felled in a few years and permission has been granted to convert up to 70% of what remains into palm or acacia plantations. The end is in sight for the great forests of Sumatra and Borneo and the animals and people who depend on them. In a frenzy of development they have been trashed in a single generation by global agribusiness and pulp and paper industries. link

In 1950, about 15% of the Earth's land surface was covered by rainforest. In fewer than fifty years, more than half of the world's tropical rainforests have fallen victim to fire and the chain saw, and the rate of destruction is still accelerating. Unbelievably, more than 200,000 acres of rainforest are burned every day. That is more than 150 acres lost every minute of every day, and 78 million acres lost every year. More than 20% of the Amazon rainforest is already gone, and much more is severely threatened as the destruction continues. It is estimated that the Amazon alone is vanishing at a rate of 20,000 square miles a year. If nothing is done to curb this trend, the entire Amazon could well be gone within another fifty years. If deforestation continues at current rates, scientists estimate nearly 80 to 90% of tropical rainforest ecosystems will be destroyed by the year 2020. link

We are now losing a tropical forest the size of New York State every year, and the carbon that releases into the atmosphere now accounts for roughly 17% of all global emissions contributing to climate change. This is more carbon dioxide, or CO2, than all cars, trucks, planes, trains and ships collectively emit into the atmosphere link

September 2012: Ten African countries come together to protect rainforests. Ten central African countries have come together to protect the Congo Basin rainforest, the world's second largest rainforest, from severe deforestation, through implementing improved national forest monitoring systems and boosting regional cooperation. The 18-month project, launched in July 2012, is managed by the Central Africa Forests Commission (COMIFAC) and the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in collaboration with Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE). link

October 2010: Deforestation rates in tropical countries dropped significantly during the last decade relative to the 1990s. FAO figures show deforestation across 121 tropical countries averaged 9.34 million hectares per year, down from 11.33 million hectares during the previous decade. link.

REDD

REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) is a United Nations program which rewards nations for conserving forests and reforesting degraded ones. The program is expected to be part of the new Copenhagen climate treaty. Unlike the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the new treaty is expected to tackle deforestation, which alone accounts for 20% of the world’s greenhouse gas emission. Halting deforestation in tropical forest nations like Indonesia and Brazil is considered crucial to reining in global warming.

Developing nations that preserve forests would be paid with carbon credits that they could sell to industrialized nations seeking to meet emissions reduction targets. Though the program’s specifics will probably take months or years to be worked out, more than a dozen projects of the United Nations program are already under way in Indonesia, backed by such diverse entities as conservation groups, the Australian government as well as paper and pulp companies. Environmental groups say the paper and pulp companies, after years of despoiling Indonesia, should not be rewarded under the program. link

Redd could be the cornerstone of a Copenhagen deal, putting forests at the frontline of tackling climate change for the first time. Q & A on REDD.

June 2010: Around $4 billion pledged at Climate and Forest Conference. The Oslo Climate and Forest Conference in Norway concluded with 50 countries agreeing on a framework for the rapid implementation of measures for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation. Around US$4 billion was pledged for the period 2010-2012 for measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries. "Measures to reduce deforestation are the quickest and least expensive way of achieving large emission cuts," said Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg. link

U.S. senate asked to consider deforestation as part of Climate Bill. A bipartisan and multi-sector panel of leaders that comprise the Commission on Climate and Tropical Forests, recommends that the United States lead a global effort to halve emissions from tropical deforestation by 2020 and achieve zero net emissions from the forest sector by 2030. Far too little attention has been paid to the role tropical deforestation has in warming the planet. It accounts for 17% of global emissions - more than all the world’s cars, trucks, planes, trains and ships combined. This is a serious oversight; if left unaddressed, deforestation will undermine all our efforts to solve the climate crisis. link

The good news is that protecting “climate forests” is a major global warming solution that can be implemented immediately and affordably. Many developing nations, including Brazil and Indonesia, which together account for 50% of global deforestation, are eager to partner with the United States to protect their climate forests. Indeed, Brazil has established a goal of reducing emissions from the Amazon by 80% by 2020 and is already making impressive progress in that direction, including robust monitoring and verification systems. Indonesia is moving in a similar direction. These efforts could be focused, honed and replicated globally.

How forests trap one trillion tons of carbon

When fossil fuels are burned they release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing to an atmospheric carbon dioxide increase that, in turn, contributes to global warming and climate change. Trees and forests help alleviate these changes by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and converting it during photosynthesis to carbon, which they then "store" in the form of wood and vegetation, a process referred to as "carbon sequestration."

Trees are generally about 20% carbon by weight and, in addition to the trees themselves, the overall biomass of forests also acts as a "carbon sink." For instance, the organic matter in forest soils - such as the humus produced by the decomposition of dead plant material - also acts as a carbon store. As a result, forests store enormous amounts of carbon: in total, the world's forests and forest soils currently store more than one trillion tons of carbon - twice the amount found floating free in the atmosphere - according to Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO ) studies. Destruction of forests, on the other hand, adds almost six billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, and preventing this stored carbon from escaping is important for the carbon balance and vital in conserving the environment, the UN (FAO) agency says. Web site for fao.org/forestry
However some of the positive statistics (see: Global report cites progress in slowing forest losses) offered by FAO are countered by the World Rainforest Movement

June 2011: Higher density means world forests are capturing more carbon, experts in Finland and the United States said of the study in the online journal PLoS One. The report, based on a survey of 68 nations, found that the amount of carbon stored in forests increased in Europe and North America from 2000-10 despite little change in forest area. And in Africa and South America, the total amount of carbon stored in forests fell at a slower rate than the loss of area, indicating that they had grown denser. Forests in Asia became less dense over the same period. The study did not try to estimate the overall trend, saying there was not yet enough data. Forests that were established in China a few decades ago are now starting to reach their fast-growing phase, a reason for rising density now. link

Boreal & Mangrove Forests

The global boreal forest is a source of carbon which happens to be the world’s largest terrestrial storehouse of carbon and has been largely overlooked in international climate discussions to date. The boreal forest circles the northern portion of our globe, carefully edging along the southern arctic through Russia, Scandinavia, Canada, and Alaska. A report out of Canada states that the boreal forest stores as much as 703 billion tons of carbon in its trees, peatlands, and soils - this amounts to nearly twice the storage capacity per unit area as tropical forests.The main difference with boreal forests is that a significant portion of its carbon is stored below vegetation level whereas tropical forests tend to store the majority of their carbon in the trees and plants themselves. Because boreal forests reside in much colder climates, much of the carbon stored in its vegetation never fully decomposes and is gradually pushed into thick layers of peat and permafrost to be stored for thousands of years. While rates of deforestation in boreal forests tend to be lower than tropical forests, this is no cause for indifference. Around 30% of Canada’s Boreal Forest has been designated for logging, and this number becomes much higher when including mining and oil and gas leases. link
March 28 2011: Boreal forests across the Northern hemisphere are undergoing rapid, transformative shifts as a result of a warming climate that, in some cases, is triggering feedback loops producing even more regional warming, according to several new studies. Scientists find that as the climate warms, vast tracks of boreal forest are undergoing a biome shift. link

Mangrove Forests.

Mangrove forests are among the most productive and biologically important ecosystems of the world, including trees, palms and shrubs which grow at tropical and subtropical tidal zones across the equator. Now scientists can use the world's most definitive map of the Earth's mangrove forest to reveal that approximately 53,190 square miles (137, 760 km2) of mangroves exist, substantially less than previous estimate. New data shows that forest distribution is 12.3% smaller than earlier estimates. Increasingly human activity and frequent severe storms have taken their toll, resulting in a loss rate for mangrove forests higher than the loss of inland tropical forests and coral reefs. "The current estimate of mangrove forests of the world is less than half what it once was, and much of that is in a degraded condition," said Dr Chandra Giri from USGSG."It is believed that 35% of mangrove forests were lost from 1980 to 2000. link

Rainforest plants, and to a lesser extent rainforest animals, are the source of compounds useful for medicinal purposes. The rainforest has been called the ultimate chemical laboratory with each rainforest species experimenting with various chemical defenses to ensure survival in the harsh world of natural selection. Rainforest plants have already provided tangible evidence of their potential with remedies for all sorts of medical problems, from childhood leukemia to toothaches. Seventy percent of the plants identified as having anti-cancer characteristics by the US National Cancer Institute are found only in the tropical rainforest. Fewer than 5% of tropical forest plant species (and 0.1% of animal species) have been examined for their chemical compounds and medicinal value. link The Amazon rainforest is home to a diversity of medicinal plants - some examples.

The Amazon River Basin is home to the largest rainforest on Earth. The basin - roughly the size of the forty-eight contiguous United States - covers some 40% of the South American continent. (The Congo is home to the world's second largest rainforest - 18% of the planet's remaining tropical rainforest.) more

The Amazon Rainforest covers over a billion acres, encompassing areas in Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia and the Eastern Andean region of Ecuador and Peru. If Amazonia were a country, it would be the ninth largest in the world. One of the worst droughts on record in the Amazon (2005) was caused by high temperatures in the Atlantic rather than el Nino. The research, published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, suggests that human-driven warming is already affecting the climate of Earth's largest rainforest. As rivers dried up, thousands of square kilometers of land burned for months on end, releasing more than 100 million metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere. link

Deforestation in the Amazon

Global agricultural expansion cut a wide swath through tropical forests during the 1980s and 1990s. More than half a million square miles of new farmland was created in the developing world between 19080 and 2000, of which over 80% was carved out of tropical forests. "Every million acres of forest that is cut releases the same amount of carbon into the atmosphere as 40 million cars do in a year," Stanford researcher Holly Gibbs said. link

December 2012: Deforestation in the Amazon update: Deforestation in the Amazon destroyed an area almost as big as the United Kingdom between 2000 and 2010, environmental watchdog agencies said Tuesday. The study prepared by the Amazon Information Network was released in Bolivia. It showed that close to 93,000 square miles of Amazon rainforest were devastated in the 10-year period. The main culprits are illegal logging, the construction of highways, mining, farming and ranching, the construction of hydroelectric dams and oil and gas drilling and exploration. 63% of the rainforest's 2.4 million square miles are in Brazil, and 80.4% of the 2000-2010 deforestation occurred in that country, the study said. Peru was responsible for 6.2% of the deforestation, and Colombia came in third with 5%. The institute added that the latest figures show Brazil is close to its 2020 target of reducing deforestation by 80% from 1990 levels. About 20% of Brazil's Amazon rainforest has been destroyed. But beginning in 2008, the government stepped up enforcement, using satellite images to track the destruction and send environmental police into areas where illegal deforestation was happening at its quickest pace. link

April 2010: Soy farming driving deforestation. Industrial soy expansion in the Brazilian Amazon has contributed to deforestation by pushing cattle ranchers further into rainforest zones. Research supports claims that soy is an important indirect driver of deforestation. Soy production exploded in the early 1990s following the development of a new variety suitable to the soils and climate of that region. link

February 2011:Severe 2010 Amazon drought raises fears of warming. The drought last year, which was worse than the 2005 drought termed a "one in a century" event, changes the region from a net absorber of carbon dioxide to a net emitter. In an average year, the basin absorbs about 1.5 billion tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere. By contrast, the impact of the 2005 drought, spread over a number of years, was calculated as a release of 5 billion tonnes. link

November 2010: Brazil announces big reduction in Amazon deforestation. Ahead of the Cancun summit, Brazil announces it has reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 34% over the last 5 years primarily resulting from cracking down on illegal logging in the Amazon. link

March 2010: Forest loss slows as China plants and Brazil preserves. Forests continue to be lost at "an alarming rate" in some countries, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Its Global Forest Resources Assessment 2010 finds the loss of tree cover is most acute in Africa and South America. But Australia also suffered huge losses because of the recent drought. Globally all forests now cover about 31% of the Earth's land surface. link

May 2009: Deforestation faster in Africa: Less than 2% of Africa's forests are under community control, compared to a third in Latin America and Asia, say the Rights and Resources Initiative. The deforestation rate in Africa is four times the world's average. link

July 2009: Ghana, which has lost an estimated 80% of its rainforest in the past 50 years, has ambitious plans to grow 24 million trees to soak up carbon dioxide and restore the rainforest. The first million seedlings are being planted in a pilot scheme in an area that has been heavily logged in recent years. The trees are all tropical hardwoods, mostly indigenous, and it is believed this project could eventually become the largest of its kind. link