Forests almost equivalent to the size of Ireland were destroyed in 2023, according to a new report that warns that the world is lagging behind targets aimed at ending deforestation.The Forest Declaration Assessment 2024, released on Tuesday, said that 6.37 million hectares (15.7 million acres) of forest were lost last year.
The amount of forest loss “significantly exceeded” the level of deforestation that would have put the globe on track to meet the aim of eradicating deforestation by 2030, the report stated. Last year’s objective was to limit global deforestation to 4.4 million hectares (10.9 million acres).
According to the research, the overshoot indicates that worldwide deforestation is still 45 percent higher than what is required to reach international standards.
“Globally, deforestation has gotten worse, not better, since the beginning of the decade,” Ivan Palmegiani, lead author of the report, said.“We’re only six years away from a critical global deadline to end deforestation, and forests continue to be chopped down, degraded, and set ablaze at alarming rates.”
Nearly 96% of all deforestation happened in tropical regions, and almost all of these places failed to fulfill their annual targets, according to the report, which also stated that reducing deforestation in the tropics was “essential to meeting global forest goals”.
“Tropical deforestation resulted in the emission of nearly 3.7 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent in 2023,” the paper’s authors reported. Researchers cited backsliding in Bolivia and Indonesia as examples of such high-risk regions.