We're still losing way too many trees every decade
But some places are doing better than others!
Over the last few years, we’ve heard many encouraging stories of people and countries planning to plant more trees and reforest areas that had been deforested. In an age of rapidly increasing climate change, it was ‘announced’ that one of our most sure-fire weapons to combat the steadily warming temperatures was to just plant more trees! Simple enough, right? Pakistan even promised to plant 10 billion trees (to put this number in perspective, there’s approximately 3 trillion trees estimated to still live on the plane)! But the total number of trees in forests, despite all the feel-good news of late, is still going down. And in its part due to some worrying climate change-induced events…
Deforestation over time
It probably comes as no surprise that the world has lost more trees than it has gained over the last 100 years. And while this amount has slowed down in recent years, it appears that we are still, as of 2020, losing trees each decade as compared to the decade before. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, every decade since 1990, the world has lost an average of about 261,000 square miles of forests. That’s about a Texas sized decrease in forest cover every 10 years. But this isn’t really felt equally across the entire world. Some countries are performing better than others and, in fact, some are gaining forests!
The United States, not exactly a paragon of climate change for the world, has increased its forest cover by about 27,000 square miles. That might not seem like much, but the U.S. used to engage in some pretty brutal clear cutting. So the fact that it’s back to gaining forested lands is pretty phenomenal. This also isn’t a development! The U.S. has gained forested lands every decade since at least 1990 (the FAO doesn’t track back further than that). The same can be said for China and India which have increased their forested lands by about 243,000 square miles and 35,000 square miles respectively. That’s really awesome progress!
But it’s not all roses. Canada, which has some of the largest, oldest, and densest forests, has seen a steady decline in its overall forest coverage. Which is a shame because Canada has some of the largest areas with intact forests outside of the Amazon rainforest. These are areas that are continuous and largely untouched by humans, making their steady decline extra sad. Russia is in a similar, albeit more steady boat in terms of forest loss. But nobody really compares to Brazil…
Brazil’s jaw dropping deforestation
The whole point of writing this article was that I got interested in forests for a future podcast episode. And in that research I decided to take a look at Brazil’s forest canopy over the years. In case you were living under a rock, Brazil is home the vast majority of the Amazon rainforest. A forest so dense, and packed with life that its very survival is likely tied to humanity’s survival as well. And Brazil has not been a good steward overall of this globally precious resource.
According the FAO, since 1990 Brazil has demolished nearly 400,000 square miles of rainforest. That’s getting disturbingly close to an entire Alaska’s worth of rainforest. And while the deforestation does appear to be slowing down – Brazil lost less forest between 2010 and 2020 than it did in the previous decade – it’s still losing far too much rainforest for the world to feel comfortable.
And unfortunately, rainforest deforestation kind of comes and goes with politics these days. According to Vox, under former president Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s rate of rainforest deforestation grew very quickly. Today, of course, Brazil is back under the leadership of President Lula who has a track record of slowing rainforest deforestation, but Bolsonaro’s damage is done. And it’s highly unlikely that Brazil will be adding new net rainforest anytime soon.
Climate change fueled deforestation
There’s one other worrying trend that I noticed during my research. And this is especially pertinent for those of us living on the west coast of the United States, though I think eventually it’ll be an issue for anyone who has any sort of forest nearby. I am, of course, talking about wildfires.
I think most people who live in California or the Pacific Northwest can attest to the increase in wildfires over the last decade. But while wildfires have been a huge detriment to the air quality in west coast cities, and the outright destruction of communities elsewhere in the region, perhaps what’s flying under the radar a bit is the impact those fires are having on deforestation.
Many wildfires, you see, don’t impact all that many humans. Instead they are started by lightning, where they burn until they come to a natural end. In many ways, this is part of the natural cycle of life for forests. But wildfires have been increasing in both quantity and intensity over the last decade, and, according to Global Forest Watch the amount of tree coverage loss from wildfires has more than doubled. That’s incredibly scary news because, as climate scientists have been warning us about for a long, long time, we’re not anywhere near where we need to stave off an even warmer climate. And with an even warmer climate there will, undoubtedly, come even larger wildfires. For lack of anything else, it’s a very worrying trend for places like the United States and Canada.
I didn’t intend for this article to be such a downer when I started researching forest loss. In fact, at one point, I thought it was going to have a bit of a pick-me-up sort of ending. But alas, the forest’s of the world are one of our few, very effective natural tools to combat climate change and yet we still cut down more trees than we replace every year. Sigh