Global deforestation last year rose by 27pc and was 63pc above the projected pathway to zero deforestation by 2030,according to the annual Forest Declaration Assessment, published this week by a climate-focused coalition of the same name.
Global deforestation in 2024 rose to 8.1mn hectares (ha), equivalent to the territory of the Czech Republic and up by 27pc from 6.37mn ha in 2023, the report said.
Agricultural expansion and recurring wildfires, especially in tropical forests, were responsible for deforestation exceeding the target set under the Kunming-Montreal biodiversity framework to halt forest loss and restore nature, which was signed by 196 nations at the UN biodiversity summit in 2022.
But at least 10.6mn ha of degraded forests were under restoration projects as of September, although the report lacks data to accurately estimate if the recovering areas follow requiredscaling processes to reach set goals.The projected restoration area, which represents nearly 5.4pc of global reforestation potential, is 30pc behind targets set under the Kunming-Montreal biodiversity framework.
The global deforestation curve "has not begun to bend" with about five years to reach the 2030 goal, the report said. But the EU's Green New Deal and Brazil's Tropical Forest Forever Facility initiative — to be officially launched in Cop 30 — may be promising for forest conservation if both overcome political pushback and legislation hurdles.
Separately from the Kunming-Montreal biodiversity framework, more than 140 countries committed to halt deforestation by 2030 at the UN Cop 26 climate summit in Glasgow, with a wider target to restore around 350mn ha of degraded lands by then.
Tropical urgency
Around 8.8mn ha of tropical moist forests were degraded in 2024, which is more than triple the projected level on the pathway to zero degradation by 2030 laid out in Cop 26.
Large-scale wildfires in the Amazon basin emitted 791mn metric tonnes of CO2 last year, exceeding Germany's greenhouse gas emissions in the same period, according to the latest Forest Declaration Assessment. The report did not provide a comparison with 2023 emissions.
Around 17-38pc of the Amazon rainforest is already degraded, and the report expects as much as 47pc degradation in the basin by 2050 because of land-use change, extreme droughts and wildfires.
Bolivia lost 9pc of its remaining intact tropical moist forests last year, accounting for 32pc of global degradation emissions. Brazil lost less than 1pc of its forest area in the period but represented half of all tropical moist forest degradation in the Amazon basin at 1.66mn ha. Venezuela's degradation last year jumped 19-fold from the five-year average, while forest degradation rose six-fold from the five-year average in the Guiana Shield countries — which comprises Guyana, Suriname, France's French Guiana, Venezuela, Colombia and Brazil.
