State of the Rainforest 2014

Findings and main messages

Reducing deforestation is urgent. Destruction of the rainforest and other tropical forests continue on a dramaticscale inspiteof unprecedentedglobal attention to the issue of deforestation and the role of forests in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. The global figures for deforestation are contested: Two main sources of data, the FAO’s Global Forest Resources Assessment (2010) and a remote sensing study by University of Maryland (2013), use different technologies and definitions of forest and display huge variation between figures (see section 2). We simply don’t know how much rainforest is left on Earth, and how fast it disappears. Both sources agree, however, that tropical forests are being destroyed at an alarming rate. According to the FAO, 130 000 km 2 of the world’s forests are lost every year, the majority in the tropics. Simultaneously, the University of Maryland calculates the annual loss of tropical forest to be 92 000 km 2 . According to the latter, 1.1 million km 2 (three times the size of Norway) have been lost from 2000 to 2012. Dense tropical rainforests once covered around 18 million km 2 of Earth, but is now reduced to half of this size. Most of this forest was lost during the last 50–60 years, and rapid deforestation continues. Except for Brazil, which has reduced deforestation at a globally significant scale, other countries have not managed to show similar positive results on the ground – in the forest – in spite of political commitments. Extensive degradation of tropical forests around the globe aggravates the problem. Intact, primary rainforests are through various forms of destructive activity transformed into secondary forests, which undermines the forests’ health and ability to deliver ecosystem services – even if the forest cover may remain. There is a serious lack of political attention to this phenomenon, and data on the extent of forest degradation are even more scattered and unreliable than those on tropical deforestation. Tropical rainforests are crucial for reaching international development goals. The forest’s ecosystem services and resources are essential for poverty alleviation, long-term food security and for solving the global environmental crises of biodiversity loss and climate change. We have known for a long time that tropical rainforests are extremely valuable, not least as habitat for half of the world’s terrestrial species, but new and ongoing research continues to widen our understanding of the extent and importance of tropical forests for local and global development. The role of tropical forests for climate regulation, rainfall patterns and availability of freshwater, the connection between forest biodiversity, food security and

agricultural production, and their importance for the livelihood and cultural survival of indigenous peoples and other local communities all underscore that protection and sustainable use of the world’s tropical rainforests need to be given much higher priority within international and national development strategies. Low deforestation development is possible … The fact that deforestation trends are not uniform gives room for some optimism. There are variations across regions which clearly show that deforestation is not a necessary consequence of economic development. It is a question of political will and choice of economic strategy. The very encouraging development in Brazil, where Amazon deforestation has been reduced by three quarters – to 26 percent of the annual average between 1996 and 2005 – is the direct result of political decisions and demonstrates that forest protection is compatible with national economic growth and social development. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), deforestation rates have been relatively stable. This is in itself positive, as most observers feared a steep increase after the end of the second Congo war in 2003. Even in Indonesia, where more rainforest is being lost than in any other country, political attention and incipient policy change represent significant steps forward. At the international level, we see governments discussing measures and private sector corporations adopting no-deforestation policies to an extent that would have been considered totally unrealistic a few years back. … but the necessary changes are complex. The direct and indirect causes behind the destruction of the rainforest are many and varied. Small-scale agriculture contributes towards deforestation on all rainforest continents, emerging as an important factor especially where deforestation rates are relatively low. The massive deforestation that has ravaged the Amazon and Southeast Asia over the last five decades is caused by large-scale actors, and illegality and crime play an important part. Some 80% of all deforestation in South America from 1990 to 2000 was caused by cattle ranching and industrial scale agriculture. Explosive growth in plantations, increasing exploitation of forest areas for mining, infrastructure development, as well as both legal and widespread illegal logging is taking place in Papua New Guinea (PNG), Indonesia, and other countries in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Driving the development is a complex web of illegal and legal activities, legitimate political decisions intertwined with pervasive corruption and illegal resource extraction and trade.

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STATE OF THE RAINFOREST 2014

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