Global deforestation reached 8.1 million hectares

Deforestation will reach 8.1 million hectares worldwide in 2024, according to a report released this Friday, less than a month before the Climate Conference in Belém, Brazil.

The document notes that world leaders are failing to meet deforestation reduction targets, the ultimate goal of which is to achieve zero deforestation and restore 350 million hectares of degraded land by 2030.

The data is collected by Forest Declaration Assessment Partners, an independent and collaborative initiative led by a coalition of civil society organizations (including the Alliance for Climate Action Brazil) and researchers, which has conducted annual analyses since 2015.

Between 2018 and 2020, average annual global deforestation reached 8.3 million hectares. “This is our baseline,” said Erin Matson, lead author of the Forest 2025 Declaration Assessment, at the report’s launch. “To achieve zero deforestation by 2030, we would need to reduce deforestation by 10% each year,” Matson said.

However, by 2024, 8.1 million hectares were deforested worldwide, a 63% deviation from the zero-deforestation target. This means that 3.1 million hectares more of forest were lost than expected.

"Every year, the gap between commitments and reality widens, with devastating impacts on people, the climate, and our economies. Forests are essential infrastructure for a livable planet. Failure to continually protect them puts our collective prosperity at risk," says Matson.

In 2024, approximately 6.73 million hectares of remote tropical forests were lost, primarily due to the devastating fires that ravaged Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Oceania.

In total, global commitments fell 190% short of targets to protect these carbon-rich forests , the loss of which released 3.1 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere—nearly 150% of the U.S. energy sector's annual emissions.

Forest degradation associated with the 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 791 million metric tons of carbon dioxide , seven times the average of the previous two years and more than the total emissions of an industrialized country like Germany.

Logging, road construction, and firewood extraction also damage forests, leading to gradual deterioration that generates significant impacts, such as carbon emissions.

The report also notes that active restoration initiatives are underway on at least 10.6 million hectares of deforested and degraded land, corresponding to 5.4% of the total and well below the 30% target.