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| Tue, 2nd Jun 2020 17:29:00 |
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Climate change: older trees loss continue around the world |
Older, carbon-rich tropical forests continue to be lost at a frightening rate, according to satellite data.
In 2019, an area of primary forest the size of a football pitch was lost every six seconds, the University of Maryland study of trees more than 5 metres says.
Brazil accounted for a third of it, its worst loss in 13 years apart from huge spikes in 2016 and 2017 from fires.
However, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo both managed to reduce tree loss.
Meanwhile, Australia saw a sixfold rise in total tree loss, following dramatic wildfires late in 2019, .
As well as storing massive amounts of carbon, primary, tropical rainforests, where trees can be hundreds or even thousands of years old, are home to species such as orangutans and tigers.
The tropics lost 11.9 million hectares (46,000 square miles) of tree cover, the study found, 3.8 million in older, primary forest areas - the third highest loss of primary trees since 2000 and a slight increase on 2018.
"The level of forest loss that we saw in 2019 is unacceptable," Frances Seymour, from the World Resources Institute, said.
"And one of the reasons that it's unacceptable is that we actually already know how to turn it around.
"If governments put into place good policies and enforce the law, forest loss goes down.
"But if governments relax restrictions on burning, or [are] signalling that they intend to open up indigenous territories for commercial exploration, forest loss goes up."
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