State of the Rainforest 2014

Why are tropical forests disappearing?

Changes in the global diets, or food consumption, is a main reason why agriculture is a major direct cause of deforestation. 4 Higher consumption of animal products, like meat, eggs and dairy products, which are more resource-intensive to produce, requires a larger amount of land and resources to feed the same number of people. 5 The growing export of food products, including beef, soy and palm oil, to industrialized countries with meat-oriented diets requires more and more land for cultivation. Economic factors like rising market prices for cash crops encourage the conversion of forests to agriculture. As an example, persistently high prices for palm oil globally have led to a quadrupling of the area covered by palm oil plantations over the past decade in Indonesia. 6 Low domestic costs for land and labour, as well as ‘deforestation- friendly’ agricultural subsidies or tax breaks are often significant underlying deforestation drivers. Logging in tropical forests often starts with extraction of a few, highly valuable species. Once the most valuable lumber has been removed, the area may be clear-felled, sometimes burned, and converted to agriculture or monoculture timber plantations. 7 This way, logging is often the first step in a deforestation process. Even selective logging where only a few valuable trees are cut down can cause serious forest degradation and, after some years, end in complete forest loss. Extractive industries and infrastructure development, such as transportation networks, hydroelectric dams, oil and gas, and mining projects, are both direct and indirect drivers

When tropical forests disappear, there is rarely a single cause – a combination of closely related direct and indirect factors bring about deforestation and forest degradation. Complicating the picture further is the fact that the drivers behind forest destruction vary significantly from one continent to the other. While cattle and soy production are responsible for the deforestation of large areas of rainforest in the southern and eastern Amazon, the palm oil industry and logging are key drivers in Indonesia and Malaysia. In the Central Africa region, small scale agriculture has long been an important deforestation factor, while commercial logging is a major driver behind forest degradation. The global demand for commodities, mainly agricultural products, including food, animal fodder, and biofuel, but also timber products, minerals, oil and gas, is the key underlying driving force for deforestation and forest degradation today. It fuels forest conversion for permanent cultivation, cattle ranching and the establishment of plantations. It has become increasingly clear that commercial and export-oriented agriculture is rapidly replacing smallholder agriculture as a key driver of deforestation. 1 In recent decades, more than 80% of new agricultural land has come from forested areas. 2 Conversion of forests into agricultural land accounts for over 50% of the deforestation in tropical and subtropical countries over the past decade. 3 Other sectors, such as logging, road construction or mineral extraction often play a major role in forest degradation, opening up new forest areas which are later turned into agricultural land.

Deforestation drivers

Russian Federation

Germany

United States

Canada

China

France

Malaysia

Indonesia

Nigeria

Mexico

Colombia

Honduras

Brazil

Cameroon

Côte d’Ivoire

Ecuador

Thailand

Papua New Guinea

Australia

Argentina

Production, thousand tonnes

Production, thousand tonnes

23 000

12 000

10 000

5 000 2 500 1 000

Beef

Palm oil

1 000 300

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STATE OF THE RAINFOREST 2014