Climate change: Record tree losses in 2021 in northern regions

Image source, Getty Images

Global Forest Watch found that tree cover losses in northern regions of the world were the highest on record.

The figures for these forests were up 30% in 2020.

The tropical primary forest lost around ten football pitches per minute.

Brazil once again led the way with an increase in tree loss associated with agricultural expansion.

This new data shows the losses of tree cover in 2021, but it is not the net picture when new plantings are taken into account.

The world's tropical regions are where most of the destruction takes place.

Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo have been at the top of the table for a long time.

Image source, Getty Images

The loss of boreal forests, which are found in northern parts of Russia, Canada and Alaska, is one of the big concerns in the new figures.

The number of trees that were destroyed in 2020 was the highest level yet recorded, and the number of trees that were cut down in 2021 was up 30%.

Climate change is seen as a key driver of tree loss in these areas, with hotter drier conditions leading to more wildfires and greater damage from insects.

Russia lost more than 6 million hectares in its worst fire season since 2001.

Rod Taylor is part of the team behind the new analysis.

Global warming is happening faster as you get closer to the poles, so we are seeing fires that burn more frequently and more broadly.

In terms of carbon, the destruction of trees in tropical areas was equal to the annual fossil fuel emissions of India.

In Brazil, over 40% of the primary forest loss occurred, with the non-fire related destruction increasing by 9%. In some states in the western Amazon region, these losses were as high as 25%.

Image source, EVARISTO SA

Climate researchers fear that the Brazilian rainforest may be approaching a tipping point when it emits more carbon than it stores, which would be a negative development in limiting the rise in global temperatures this century.

Over two thirds of the clearance of trees in Bolivia was linked to large scale agriculture such as cattle ranching.

There is some good news in the data, with Indonesia decreasing tree losses for the fifth year in a row.

There are many factors behind this success.

The government has put a stop to the conversion of forest and land for palm oil. They have included a commitment in their national climate plan to reduce emissions from forests so they become a carbon sink.

They have been helped by industry actions, with the rate of palm oil destruction at a 20 year low, while commitments to stop clearing new lands have also been tightened.

There are concerns that things in Indonesia could change for the worse in the future.

The palm oil price is currently at a 40-year high and this might increase the appetite to expand palm oil plantation areas.

Image source, Getty Images

A temporary freeze on new oil palm plantations was not renewed last year.

The data from Indonesia and Malaysia is positive, but the picture is not going in the right direction.

This will require significant and rapid action in many countries that are not currently showing it.

The best efforts of many governments to preserve the forests could be in danger due to a rapidly changing climate.

The hotter, drier conditions that climate change is bringing, which compound the local effects of deforestation itself, are linked to the fires.

The wholesale conversion of the Amazon rainforest to a savanna grassland would release enough carbon into the atmosphere to blow the Paris Agreement goals out of the water.

The data was compiled by Global Forest Watch, World Resources Institute and the University of Maryland.

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