Dramatic forest loss in Colombia, good news from Indonesia

Tropical zones, the most vulnerable to deforestation, lost a total of 15.8 million hectares of tree cover: the equivalent of Bangladesh. And this is not even the worst figure recorded in the past 16 years. Colombia, which in 2018 announced the creation of one of the largest protected areas in the world, was the country that suffered the most: compared to 2016, forest loss increased by 46 per cent, particularly in regions bordering the Amazon rainforest. Paradoxically, this dramatic increase is due above all to the fact that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), following the peace agreement with the government, abandoned forests that had previously been under their control, thereby ensuring those areas remained impenetrable.

For the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2017 was in fact the worst year since records began in 2001, primarily due to agriculture and charcoal production. Good news, on the other hand, comes from Indonesia, which saw a 60 per cent reduction in primary forest loss, reaching as high as 88 per cent in areas that have been protected since 2016 from activities that risk altering the hydrological qualities of peatland.

Global Nature Watch @globalforests

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The @UMD_GLAD #2017TreeCoverLoss data just released on @globalforests shows 2017 was the second-worst year on record for tropical tree cover loss. Learn more bit.ly/2017treecover

69 3 27 giu 2018 · Apri su X →

The causes of deforestation

It is estimated that only 15 per cent of the forests that existed before human civilisation are still intact. "Why they are disappearing is no mystery: vast areas continue to be cleared to grow soy and palm oil, for timber or livestock farming," Frances Seymour of the World Resources Institute explained to the British newspaper Guardian. "In many cases deforestation is illegal and linked to corruption."

Global Forest Watch confirms the importance of indigenous peoples in protecting ecosystems

As well as harming wildlife, it is clear that cutting down trees deprives us of important allies in the fight against climate change: by protecting forests, up to 7 billion tonnes of CO2 per year can be saved, a staggering figure. Protecting them requires help, but we already know where it could come from: indigenous peoples. For this reason, their presence is often regarded as an inconvenience by those with economic interests, to the point of endangering their very lives: data from Global Forest Watch show that where they live, forest loss is halved.

In 2017 the world lost a forest area the size of Italy. The Global Forest Watch investigation