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Tue 03 05 2022
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Every minute – ten football fields of rainforest are destroyed

by bernt & torsten

Nothing happens when it comes to the destruction of tropical rainforests on earth. Rapidly halting the destruction of the earth’s tropical rainforests is critical both to slow down the loss of biodiversity and to meet the 1.5-degree climate target.

In connection with the UN’s major climate summit COP26 in Glasgow in November, 141 countries agreed to stop the loss of untouched forests until 2030. Until then, only eight years remain.

If the goal is to be achieved, the curve of annual losses must therefore immediately begin to decline.

But new figures – presented by Global Forest Watch and produced by researchers at the University of Maryland – show that losses remain at high levels in recent years.

Last year, 3.75 million hectares of tropical rainforest were lost globally. That equates to ten football pitches per minute.

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Good examples are not lacking. In Malaysia, deforestation has declined in recent years, according to Global Forest Watch . Gabon and Guyana are also highlighted as good examples.

But as a whole, the picture is dark.

Amazon’s worst

According to Global Forest Watch, the loss of rainforest last year resulted in an extra emission of 2.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This corresponds to 50 times Sweden’s annual territorial emissions

The countries that were devastated the most last year are Congo-Kinshasa, Bolivia, Indonesia and Peru.

But the number one remained Brazil. More than 40 percent of all tropical primeval forests lost disappeared in Brazil.

Fighting for survival

According to Global Forest Watch, the loss of rainforest is particularly severe in Brazil. New research shows that the Amazon may be even closer to an irreversible turning point as the forest begins to destroy itself than researchers previously feared.

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