Environment Report: Destroyed forest area in 2023 almost as large as Latvia

According to a report, an area of forest almost the size of Latvia was destroyed worldwide in 2023. This puts the world far behind its targets for protecting forests.

This was revealed in the State of Forests report published jointly by research organizations and civil associations. According to the report, global forest destruction in 2023 was 45 percent above the level required to end deforestation by 2030. More than 140 countries committed to this at the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow.

According to the report, 6.37 million hectares of forest have been lost. The Forest Declaration Assessment, which is also funded by the German government, shows how far a country or region is from the declared goal of "zero deforestation". To this end, annual interim targets were formulated up to 2030 and these were compared with the actual deforestation rates.

Many tropical regions miss targets

Almost 96 percent of all deforestation in 2023 took place in tropical regions. And almost all of these regions had missed the targets for the year: Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. Agriculture, road construction, fires and commercial logging were the main drivers of destruction. Of the tropical regions, only Oceania - the Pacific island states to the north and east of Australia - would have achieved its annual target.

"We are only six years away from a critical global deadline to end deforestation, and forests continue to be cut down, degraded and set on fire at an alarming rate," said Ivan Palmegiani of the organization Climate Focus, one of the report's lead authors. However, a course correction is possible. Above all, the industrialized countries would have to rethink their excessive consumption and support the forest countries.

Progress in Brazil

The largest areas of forest have been lost in Brazil, Indonesia, Bolivia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Although Brazil is the country with the greatest deforestation worldwide, it has made progress since President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office: deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon region fell by 62% in 2023 compared to 2022. The Amazon rainforest is considered a CO2 reservoir and plays an important role in the international fight against climate change.