Deforestation Is High, Despite COP26 Promises

There was little evidence of progress in the year after the international climate talks in Glasgow last year, according to a report released Thursday.

The World Resources Institute, a research group based in Washington, D.C., found that tropical regions lost 9.3 million acres of primary old-growth forest in 2011. It resulted in 2.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, which is two and a half times as much as the emissions of passenger cars and light trucks in the United States each year.

Brazil had the largest share of forest loss, accounting for more than 40% of the total.

Last year's total was a decline of 11 percent from the previous year, but it was still equal to the amount lost.

Rod Taylor, the global director of the institute's global forests program, said that the flat rate of deforestation over the last four years was not good for the climate, for the extinction crisis, and for the fate of many forest peoples.

The majority of forest loss in the tropics is related to agriculture and mining. Forests are often burned and can grow out of control.

Adding planet-warming gases to the atmosphere is one of the reasons for the destruction of land.

At the United Nations climate talks in Glasgow last November, 141 nations, including Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo, pledged to halt and reverse the destruction of forests by the year 2030.

A senior fellow at the institute saidastic steps will be needed to reach that goal.

The baseline for assessing the effectiveness of the actions that they take to follow through could be considered by the numbers we are sharing today.

There was some good news from Asia in the report. In Indonesia, forest loss fell by one-fourth from 2020 to 2020. Malaysia had a fifth straight year of declines, although forest loss was slightly less than in 2020.

Indonesia has instituted tougher regulations on the palm oil industry and others responsible for most of the loss due to the extensive forest and peat fires in 2016 Corporations have been pressured to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

The institute's Indonesia manager said that this indicates that corporate commitments and government actions are working, and that Indonesia is heading in the right direction to make some of its climate commitments.

A new law that could weaken environmental regulations in Indonesia is cause for concern according to Andika Putraditama. If the government fails to maintain adequate protective measures, companies would need to increase efforts to provide voluntary safeguards, like the ethical supply chain movement that supports the use of sustainable materials.

In West Africa, there were declines in tree loss. The Democratic Republic of Congo lost 1.2 million acres of forest due to small-scale agriculture and charcoal production.

In the western part of the Amazon basin, tree-cover loss increased. This could be linked to the development of roads and other infrastructure in the region, which allows mining and other forest-destruction activities to occur.

The Amazon, the world's largest tropical forest, is less able to recover from disruptions like droughts and logging, and at least part of the region is approaching a threshold where it will shift from forest to grassland.

Ms. Seymour said that releasing enough carbon into the atmosphere would blow the Paris Agreement goals out of the water. She said that the implication of the report's findings is that we have to dramatically reduce emissions from all sources.

She said that no one should think about planting trees if they want to reduce emissions from fossil fuels.

More than 27 million acres of forest cover was lost in the tropics. Older primary forests in humid regions are the most important part of keeping carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

The institute collaborated with the Global Land Analysis and Discovery laboratory at the University of Maryland to develop methods to determine the extent of forest cover.