In 2024, 8.1 million hectares of forest will be lost in the world, 3.1 million more than the maximum loss that is a goal for 2030. Data released less than a month before the Climate Conference in Bethlehem (Brazil) that has the fight against deforestation among the most important topics.
The data is collected in this year’s “Forest Declaration Assessment” report, an independent and collaborative initiative led by a coalition of civil society organizations and researchers brought together in the “Forest Declaration Assessment Partners” and which has carried out annual analyzes since 2015.
Millions of hectares of deforested forests
Between 2018 and 2020, the average annual global deforestation reached 8.3 million hectares. “This is our reference”said Erin Matson, lead author of the Assessment of the Declaration on Forests 2025, at the presentation of the report.
“To achieve zero deforestation by 2030, we would have to reduce it by 10% each year”he assures.
However, in 2024, 8.1 million hectares of forest will be cleared worldwide, representing a 63% deviation from the goal of zero deforestation. That is, 3.1 million more hectares of forest were cut down than expected.
The document points out that world leaders are failing to meet the objectives of reducing deforestation in accordance with the commitments made for the first time in 2014, which were renewed with the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use (2021) and which were incorporated into the global balance of the COP28 held in Dubai in 2023.
“Every year, the gap between commitments and reality widens, with devastating impacts on people, the climate and our economies. Forests are indispensable infrastructure for a liveable planet. Failure to continually protect them puts our collective prosperity at risk.”Matson asserts.
The Assessment measures progress on commitments by countries, companies and investors to eliminate deforestation and achieve the restoration of 350 million hectares of degraded lands by 2030, according to the Glasgow and Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework commitments.
It also measures the reduction in forest loss compared to the 2018-2020 baseline and determines how far regions are from reaching zero loss by 2030.
Loss of tropical forest due to fires
Around 6.73 million hectares of remote and pristine tropical forests were lost in 2024, mainly due to devastating fires that devastated Latin America, Asia, Africa and Oceania.
In total, global commitments missed their targets by 190% to protect these carbon-rich forests, the loss of which released 3.1 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases (GHG) into the atmosphere, almost 150% of the annual emissions of the US energy sector.
Alarming degradation in the Amazon region
Forest degradation associated with fires was “particularly alarming” in the eight countries of the Amazon region: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela.
Emissions associated with these fires reached approximately 791 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (Mt CO₂e), seven times the average emissions from fires in the previous two years (117 Mt CO₂e) and more than the total GHG emissions of an industrialized country such as Germany.
Logging, road construction or firewood collection also damage, even if they do not cut down, forests, leading to gradual deterioration that generates significant impacts, such as carbon emissions.
Restoration of deforested areas
The report also notes that there are active restoration initiatives underway on at least 10.6 million hectares of deforested and degraded lands.
This represents about 5.4% of the global reforestation potential (a measure of the areas that can be reforested after being completely deforested) and only 0.3% of the global biophysical restoration potential of forests (a measure of the areas that were degraded or deforested).data “far below” of the 30% target established in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
Approximately two-thirds of this area (about seven million hectares) are in tropical regions, 3.3 million hectares in temperate zones and 250,000 hectares in boreal forests.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), WWF, World Resources Institute, The Nature Conservancy, The Brazilian Coalition on Climate, Forests and Agriculture, Swansea University (Wales), FSC, Conservation International, are among other entities working on the preparation of the report.