Deforestation – Can it be curbed by 2030?

Since Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo lost the second, fifth and sixth largest forest areas between 2001 and 2021, corresponding to 63, 29 and 17 million hectares in deforested land respectively, this was a necessary commitment. Even the final figure is twice the area of Hungary. Furthermore, these three countries rank first, second and third in the same order in terms of tropical rainforest area loss between 2001 and 2021.

The disappearance of these forests is of particular concern because a distinction should be made between the felling of millions of hectares of low-biodiversity forests in Russia, which are planted specifically for this purpose, and the loss of equatorial rainforests containing up to 40,000 species of insects, over 300 species of trees, and 1,500 higher plant species per hectare. Anti-deforestation commitments made by countries with extensive rainforests are therefore welcome, but whether they will be implemented is another question.

Some weeks ago, the BBC reported that certain important commitments made in Glasgow are set to fail. In 2022, tropical rainforest equivalent to the size of Switzerland was lost worldwide. In Brazil, the world’s “rainforest superpower”, 14 percent more forest was cleared in 2022 than in 2021, while timber extraction grew by ten percent on a global scale. The good news, however, is that six months into the presidency of Lula, Brazil’s new head of state and government who took office in early 2023, deforestation has been significantly reduced: 34 percent less forest area was lost between January and June than in the same period last year.

The case of Indonesia, the world’s second most biodiverse country, is a further cause for optimism. In the Southeast Asian country, deforestation peaked in 2016 and has been on a downward trend since then. In 2019, a moratorium prohibiting the clearance of primeval forests to give way to plantations and logging was finalized. This shows that when Indonesia acceded to the Glasgow Climate Pact in 2021, there was already exceeding will and legislation in place on behalf of the government to fulfill its commitments.

It should be noted, however, that in the case of both Brazil (first half of 2023) and Indonesia, we are still only talking about reducing deforestation and not restoring deforested areas, re-wilding and returning to the expansion of primeval forests. This would of course be the ultimate goal, but accomplishments so far have been limited to decreasing the rate of habitat degradation; Indonesia, which covers an area over twenty times larger than Hungary, “merely” lost tropical rainforest equivalent to the size of Komárom-Esztergom county in 2022.

The COP26 pledge to end deforestation could be of pivotal importance in the fight against biodiversity loss, especially in countries where original biodiversity is unimaginably high from the perspective of temperate climate zones. Although as for now, the path to fulfilling these commitments seems to be an uphill one, positive examples can nevertheless be cited. Even if the targets set are not feasible for all signatories individually, their realization is possible, if challenging, by 2030.

Note: the terms ‘tropical rainforest’ and ‘primeval forest’ are not used as synonyms in the present paper, as primeval forests can occur in any climate zone (except in the Arctic), while tropical rainforests occur only along the equator. However, tropical rainforests along the equator can also be considered primeval forests, which is why both terms are used.