• The Global Forest review data on deforestation has been published.
• In 2022, deforestation grew by 10 per cent compared to the previous year.
• International agreements to eliminate the problem by 2030 are not working.

Despite pledges and protection targets, an area the size of Switzerland was deforested in 2022. We are talking about 4.1 million hectares, more than 10 per cent more than the year before, and this refers to primary rainforests alone — the most untouched on Earth. The causes of deforestation are well known: new livestock farms, agricultural expansion and mining. From the Amazon to Ghana, the equivalent of 11 football pitches every minute has disappeared. It goes without saying that rainforests are the world's most biodiversity-rich ecosystems, as well as being among the largest "stores" of CO2. This means that human beings are destroying one of the most effective tools for mitigating global warming.

These grim findings are revealed by data collected by the World Resources Institute (Wri) together with the University of Maryland and published in the annual Global Forest review. The deforestation agreements have done little — if anything at all. One of the most recent was signed between Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, last November on the sidelines of Cop 27. It is a déjà vu, given that the year before, during Cop 26 in Glasgow, the Global deforestation pledge had already been drawn up, to which more than 100 global leaders — including Joe Biden, Xi Jinping and Jair Bolsonaro — had signed up, committing to reverse deforestation by 2030 through a series of actions covering more than 90 per cent of the world's forests. We can now say it plainly: that plan has failed.

Brazil is the country with the most deforestation

Brazil, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Bolivia (one of the few countries that did not sign the Cop26 commitments on deforestation) top the ranking for tropical primary forest loss in 2022. Indonesia and Malaysia have managed to reduce loss rates, having taken significant action in recent years. Positive results are also coming from Africa, particularly from Gabon and the Congo. Ghana, on the other hand, one of the world's leading cocoa producers, has seen the largest relative increase in forest loss in recent years, although the absolute figures are far smaller than in other countries.

Brazil dominates tropical primary forest losses, and in 2022 this increased by almost 15 per cent. In the state of Amazonas, which is home to more than half of Brazil's intact forests, the deforestation rate has almost doubled over the past three years. In Bolivia, forest fires and soya cultivation have increased deforestation by more than 30 per cent.

And then there are the threatened indigenous territories, because cutting down trees means depriving native peoples of their lands. Brazilian conservatives are attempting to introduce a law, known as the marco temporal, to strip indigenous people of their right to live on their own lands.

In 2022, in the Amazon alone, the territories of Apyterewa, Karipuna and Sepoti all recorded record levels of primary forest loss linked to deforestation. Primary forest loss due to mining activity is also visible in the Yanomami indigenous territory, which was at the centre of a government operation in early 2023 aimed at expelling illegal miners.

Brazil may have already passed the point of no return

Former president Jair Bolsonaro left his country a legacy of record deforestation levels (at a rate of as many as 21 trees felled every second) that new leader Lula da Silva has pledged to reverse. For now the results are promising: since the latest president took office, deforestation in Brazil has plummeted by 68 per cent.

Even so, Brazil remains for now the country with the highest deforestation rate, even though it has promised to end deforestation in the Amazon and other biomes by 2030. It will not be an easy task, and the first tangible results will not be visible before 2024. Above all, however, the hope is that the damage done over the past 20 years (in 2022, Brazil accounted for 48 per cent of global primary rainforest loss) has not already brought about the crossing of a "tipping point" — a point of no return. Because that would mean the Amazon is already gradually turning into a savanna.

What are the solutions?

What the scientific community is telling us is that if we do not stop deforestation, it will be very unlikely that we can limit the rise in warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. But what are the solutions? Inger la Cour Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep), argues that increasing the value of the much-discussed carbon credits linked to reforestation and afforestation projects would help countries such as Gabon or Brazil to protect their forests.

Giorgio Vacchiano, forest researcher, on deforestation worldwide in 2022 and on the role of countries in the global south.

But beyond the enormous sum required for maintenance (which, for example, the report by the Energy transition commissions coalition estimates at around 130 billion dollars a year, with similar figures cited by the Coalition of Rainforest Nations), there are serious doubts about the effectiveness of these measures: a few months ago, an investigation by the German weekly Die Zeit revealed that more than 90 per cent of reforestation projects linked to carbon credits are in reality overestimated.

It should be noted that in the most recent agreement signed — dubbed by experts "the Opec of forest conservation" — Brazil, Indonesia and the DRC decided to control the prices of carbon credits issued by projects, precisely in order to regulate the quantity released onto the market and avoid the generation of "phantom" credits. It is a credible initiative, but one that still needs to be examined in detail.