Vast swathes of tropical forests have been burned or cut down in 2021, replaced by crops or livestock, particularly in Brazil, researchers warned on Thursday, as climate change complicates the preservation of forest cover.
About 11.1 million hectares of forest were lost in the tropics last year, including 3.75 million in primary forests, according to the annual study by Global Forest Watch (GFW), the World resources institute ( WRI) and the University of Maryland.
“It's 10 football pitches per minute.
And it's been going on for a year”, warns Rod Taylor, who directs the WRI's forest program, speaking of primary forests.
1.5 million hectares gone up in smoke in Brazil
The destruction of these intact forests released 2.5 gigatonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere in 2021, the equivalent of India's annual emissions, according to the researchers' calculations.
More than 40% of the primary forest lost in 2021 was in Brazil, with approximately 1.5 million hectares cut down or gone up in smoke, followed by the Democratic Republic of Congo with nearly 500,000 hectares destroyed.
Bolivia has seen its highest level of forest destruction since the measures began in 2001, at almost 300,000 hectares.
Beyond the tropics, the report shows that boreal forests in the northern hemisphere have suffered the greatest loss of forest cover in two decades.
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In Russia alone, an exceptional fire season led to the loss of 6.5 million hectares of forests, a record.
The researchers warn of a potential "snowball effect", where more frequent fires lead to more CO2 in the atmosphere, fueling global warming which increases the risk of wildfires.
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These data are published as 141 world leaders pledged at COP26 in Glasgow at the end of 2021 to "halt and reverse forest loss by 2030".
The destruction of primary forest will have to be greatly reduced each year until the end of the decade to achieve this goal, warn the researchers.
A recent study suggests that the Amazon rainforest may be closer to a "tipping point" than previously estimated.
It could turn into savannah and release vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.
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Brazil, home to around a third of the world's remaining primary rainforest, has seen the rate of destruction of its forests accelerate in recent years.
Destruction not caused by fire, often linked to the creation of agricultural areas according to WRI, increased by 9% compared to 2020.