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world resources institute
2023 Was '2 Steps Forward, 2 Steps Back' for Tropical Forest Loss
"Steep declines in the Brazilian Amazon and Colombia show that progress is possible, but increasing forest loss in other areas has largely counteracted that progress," one expert said.
Apr 04, 2024
An annual accounting of global deforestation, released Thursday, shows that political will can make a significant difference when it comes to protecting vital ecosystems and the Indigenous and local communities that depend on them—but that policymakers in many regions are not taking enough action to save tropical forests.
The data, gathered by the University of Maryland's Global Land Analysis and Discover Lab and published on the World Resources Institute's (WRI) Global Forest Watch program, found that primary tropical forest loss in 2023 decreased by more than one-third in Brazil and nearly 50% in Colombia after both countries elected leaders who championed conservation policies. However, on the global level, these declines were offset by increased deforestation in other countries.
"The world took two steps forward, two steps back when it comes to this past year's forest loss," Global Forest Watch director Mikaela Weisse said in a statement. "Steep declines in the Brazilian Amazon and Colombia show that progress is possible, but increasing forest loss in other areas has largely counteracted that progress. We must learn from the countries that are successfully slowing deforestation."
"This year's forest loss numbers tell an inspiring story of what we can achieve when leaders prioritize action, but the data also highlights many urgent areas of missed opportunity to protect our forests and our future."
All told, 3.7 million hectares of primary tropical forests were felled last year at a rate equivalent to 10 soccer fields per minute. While tropical deforestation decreased by 9% in 2023 compared with 2022, the overall deforestation rate has held steady when compared to 2019 and 2021. Tree clearing released 2.4 metric gigatons of climate pollution into the atmosphere, which is nearly half of the U.S.'s yearly emissions from burning fossil fuels.
"Forests are critical ecosystems for fighting climate change, supporting livelihoods, and protecting biodiversity," WRI President and CEO Ani Dasgupta said in a statement.
Global Forest Watch focuses on the tropics because more than 96% of human-caused deforestation occurs there. However, the climate crisis contributed to making 2023 a devastating year for global tree loss, which rose 24% due to record-breaking wildfires in Canada's boreal forests.
"That is one of the biggest anomalies on record," University of Maryland researcher Matt Hansen told Reuters, adding, "It's a big deal, and it's a cautionary tale for climate impacts to fire."
In the tropics, Brazil managed to cut primary deforestation by 36%, the lowest level in the country since 2015. The country moved from being responsible for 43% of tropical deforestation in 2022 to 30% in 2023.
The decline coincided with the election of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who replaced former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro oversaw record deforestation as he prioritized exploitative industries over forest protections and Indigenous rights. Since taking office in early 2023, Lula has reversed course by promising to end deforestation by 2030, ramping up enforcement efforts against illegal forest clearing, rolling back anti-environmental measures, and recognizing new Indigenous territories.
"We're incredibly proud to see such stark progress being made across the country, especially in the Brazilian Amazon," Mariana Oliveira, who manages the Forests, Land Use, and Agriculture Program for WRI Brazil, said in a statement.
In Brazil, Amazon forest loss decreased by 39%, though deforestation increased in the vulnerable and vital Cerrado and Pantanal ecosystems.
"We still have a very long ways to improve and sustain the efforts, and I hope today's release energizes the national and subnational governments in Brazil—and governments around the world—to build on this momentum rather than using it as an excuse to slow down," Oliveira said.
The other 2023 success story was Colombia, which curbed primary forest loss by 49%. This reversal followed the election of left-wing President Gustavo Petro Urrego, who took office in August 2022 with Vice President Francia Márquez, a Goldman Environmental Prize winner. After a 2016 peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, other armed groups and other opportunists moved into territories they had vacated, increasing forest loss. Petro has prioritized conservation in negotiating peace agreements with these other armed groups.
"The story of deforestation in Colombia is complex and deeply intertwined with the country's politics, which makes 2023's historic decrease particularly powerful," WRI Colombia natural resources manager Alejandra Laina said in a statement. "There is no doubt that recent government action and the commitment of the communities has had a profound impact on Colombia's forests, and we encourage those involved in current peace talks to use this data as a springboard to accelerate further progress."
Despite the good news out of Brazil and Colombia, upticks in deforestation in Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Laos counteracted that progress on the global level. In Bolivia, forest loss rose by 27% to reach the greatest loss on record for a third consecutive year. A little over half of this was due to fires that spread more readily because of climate-fueled drought, while the rest was due to the expansion of agriculture, particularly soy. Agriculture was the main force behind deforestation in Nicaragua—which cleared 4.2% of its remaining primary forest—and Laos, which saw record loss of 47%.
Deforestation rates also continued to creep upward in Congo at 3% in 2023. This is concerning because the Congo rainforest is the last tropical forest that reliably acts as a carbon sink, and because of its importance to local communities.
"Forests are the backbone of livelihoods for Indigenous people and local communities across Africa, and this is especially true in the Congo Basin," Teodyl Nkuintchua, the Congo Basin strategy and engagement lead at WRI, said in a statement. "Dramatic policy action must be taken in the Congo Basin to enact new development pathways that support a transition away from unsustainable food and energy production practices, while improving well-being for Indigenous people and local communities as much as revenues for countries."
The new data comes as world leaders have six years to meet their promise, made at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow in 2021, of ending deforestation by 2030. However, WRI found that nearly 2 million more hectares were cleared in 2023 than would be consistent with meeting that goal, Mongabay reported.
WRI global forest director Rod Taylor told reporters that the world was "far off track and trending in the wrong direction when it comes to reducing global deforestation."
WRI's Dasgupta said: "The world has just six years left to keep its promise to halt deforestation. This year's forest loss numbers tell an inspiring story of what we can achieve when leaders prioritize action, but the data also highlights many urgent areas of missed opportunity to protect our forests and our future."
Taylor added that the rest of the world could not rely on individual leaders like Lula or Petro, but should take steps to encourage deforestation such as making it more profitable to preserve forests than to clear them, making sure global supply chains are deforestation free, and protecting the land rights of Indigenous peoples.
"Bold global mechanisms and unique local initiatives together are both needed to achieve enduring reductions in deforestation across all tropical front countries," Taylor said.
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'Baby Steps' Will Not Avert Climate Catastrophe, UN Warns
The United Nations assessment coincided with the release of "the world's most comprehensive roadmap of how to close the global gap in climate action across sectors."
Nov 14, 2023
"The world is failing to get a grip on the climate crisis."
That's how United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres began his Tuesday remarks about a new U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) report on nationally determined contributions (NDCs), or countries' plans to meet the goals of the Paris agreement, including its 1.5°C temperature target.
The UNFCCC analysis "provides yet more evidence that the world remains massively off track to limiting global warming to 1.5°C and avoiding the worst of climate catastrophe," said Guterres. "As the report shows, global ambition stagnated over the past year and national climate plans are strikingly misaligned with the science."
"COP28 must be the place to urgently close the climate ambition gap."
Under current NDCs from the 195 Paris agreement parties, global greenhouse gas emissions are set to rise by nearly 9% by 2030, compared with 2010 levels, according to the analysis. While that's a slight improvement on the 10.6% increase from last year's assessment, it's still nowhere near the cuts that experts say are needed.
The analysis of NDCs comes as scientists project that 2023 will be the hottest year in 125,000 years and just over two weeks before the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP28) in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, a summit controversially led by Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.
"As the reality of climate chaos pounds communities around the world—with ever fiercer floods, fires, and droughts—the chasm between need and action is more menacing than ever," Guterres declared. "COP28 must be the place to urgently close the climate ambition gap."
U.N. Climate Change Executive-Secretary Simon Stiell echoed Guterres' call to action, stressing in a statement that the new assessment makes clear governments are merely "taking baby steps to avert the climate crisis."
"It shows why governments must make bold strides forward at COP28 in Dubai, to get on track," Stiell said. "This means COP28 must be a clear turning point. Governments must not only agree what stronger climate actions will be taken but also start showing exactly how to deliver them."
The UNFCCC document was released on the same day as State of Climate Action 2023, which its crafters called "the world's most comprehensive roadmap of how to close the global gap in climate action across sectors."
Published under Systems Change Lab, the latter report highlights that only one of the dozens of indicators assessed, the share of electric vehicles in passenger car sales, is on track to meet its 2030 target.
As the publication details:
Recent rates of change for 41 of the 42 indicators across power, buildings, industry transport, forests and land, food and agriculture, technological carbon removal, and climate finance are not on track to reach their 1.5°C-aligned targets for 2030. Worryingly, 24 of those indicators are well off track, such that at least a twofold acceleration in recent rates of change will be required to achieve their 2030 targets. Another six indicators are heading in the wrong direction entirely. Within this subset of lagging indicators, the most recent year of data represents a concerning worsening relative to recent trends for three indicators, with significant setbacks in efforts to eliminate public financing for fossil fuels, dramatically reduce deforestation, and expand carbon pricing systems.
To get back on track, the international community must "dramatically increase growth in solar and wind power" while also phasing out "coal in electricity generation seven times faster—which is equivalent to retiring roughly 240 average-sized coal-fired power plants each year through 2030," the report warns.
The publication also emphasizes the need for shifting to healthier, more sustainable diets eight times faster, increasing the coverage of rapid transit six times faster, reducing the annual rate of deforestation four times faster, and scaling up global climate finance by nearly $500 billion annually until 2030.
"Despite decades of dire warnings and wake-up calls, our leaders have largely failed to mobilize climate action anywhere near the pace and scale needed," declared the report's lead author, Sophie Boehm of the World Resources Institute (WRI). "Such delays leave us with very few routes to secure a livable future for all. There's no time left to tinker at the edges. Instead, we need immediate, transformational changes across every single sector this decade."
Every world leader is under pressure to ramp up efforts to cut emissions, including U.S. President Joe Biden, who on Tuesday received a letter from hundreds of scientists urging him to "increase the ambition of domestic climate action—including through accelerating a just and equitable clean energy transition, rejecting the expansion of new long-lived fossil fuel infrastructure, investing in climate resilience, and ramping up climate finance—while working toward the strongest possible agreement at COP28."
The United States now ranks behind China as the top emitting country but still leads the world in cumulative planet-heating emissions. According to a U.S. government assessment released Tuesday, the nation is "warming faster than the global average," and "the effects of human-caused climate change are already far-reaching and worsening across every region."
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UN Puts Out 'Truly Damning Report Card' for Climate Action Before Global Summits
"This report is a wake-up call to the injustice of the climate crisis and a pivotal opportunity to correct course," said one expert.
Sep 08, 2023
"The United Nations' polite prose glosses over what is a truly damning report card for global climate efforts. Carbon emissions? Still climbing. Rich countries' finance commitments? Delinquent. Adaptation support? Lagging woefully behind."
That's how Ani Dasgupta, president and CEO of the World Resources Institute, began his response to a "global stocktake" report released Friday by the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) ahead of two global summits.
"This report is a wake-up call to the injustice of the climate crisis and a pivotal opportunity to correct course," Dasgupta continued. "We already knew the world is failing to meet its climate goals, but leaders now have a concrete blueprint underpinned by a mountain of evidence for how to get the job done."
"There are a few bright spots worth celebrating," he noted. "But overall, the report finds there are more gaps than progress—gaps that can only be erased by transformational change across systems like energy, food, land, and transport. The future of our planet depends on whether national leaders use this stark assessment as a catalyst for bold systems transformation."
"This report makes clear that President Biden is squandering precious time every second he fails to take bold action on fossil fuels."
The UNFCCC report comes nearly eight years after countries finalized the Paris climate agreement, which aims to keep global temperature rise this century below 2°C, relative to preindustrial levels, with a more ambitious target of 1.5°C.
"The global stocktake was designed under the Paris agreement to assess our global response to the climate crisis and chart a better way forward," the UNFCCC explained Friday. "The global stocktake is held every five years and is intended to inform the next round of nationally determined contributions to be put forward by 2025."
Data collection began in 2021, ultimately resulting in more than 170,000 pages of written submissions and over 252 hours of meetings and discussions. The new synthesis report summarizes 17 key technical findings from the discussions.
"I urge governments to carefully study the findings of the report and ultimately understand what it means for them and the ambitious action they must take next," said U.N. Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell. "It's the same for businesses, communities, and other key stakeholders. While the catalytic role of the Paris agreement and the multilateral process will remain vital in the coming years, the global stocktake is a critical moment for greater ambition and accelerating action."
As University College London professor of climatology Mark Maslin explained, the report "makes it clear that the Paris agreement was a game-changer" but also countries' greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction pledges are not in line with the 1.5°C target.
"The U.N. estimates that... we need to reduce global GHG emissions by 43% by 2030 and further by 60% by 2035 compared to 2019 levels and reach net-zero [carbon dioxide] emissions by 2050 globally," Maslin summarized. "This is a huge ask given that greenhouse gas emissions were at their highest level ever in 2022."
"All the technology exists to undergo the net-zero transformation but the huge increases in renewables, [electric vehicles], and batteries [have] to be even more rapid to make the huge cuts suggested by the U.N.—estimates are we need everything to happen five times faster," he added.
The UNFCCC publication was released in preparation for the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP28)—scheduled for November and December in Dubai, United Arab Emirates—where the first global stocktake will conclude.
"This global stocktake report provides clear direction on how we can meet the expectations of the Paris agreement by taking decisive action in this critical decade," said COP28 President-Designate Sultan Al Jaber—whose selection for the summit post is controversial because he also heads the UAE's Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. "We must urgently disrupt business as usual and unite like never before to move from ambition to action and from rhetoric to real results."
The report also comes just ahead of U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres' Climate Ambition Summit scheduled to begin on September 20 in New York City. In response, activists have planned the March to End Fossil Fuels on September 17.
Organizers of the NYC march are calling on U.S. President Joe Biden to stop federal approvals for new fossil fuel projects and repeal permits for "climate bombs" like the Willow project and the Mountain Valley Pipeline; phase out oil and gas drilling on public lands and waters; declare a climate emergency; and provide a just transition.
Advocacy groups supporting the march issued fresh demands for action on Friday in response to the UNFCCC publication.
"This report makes clear that President Biden is squandering precious time every second he fails to take bold action on fossil fuels," said the Center for Biological Diversity's Jean Su, who previously authored a document detailing how an emergency declaration would empower the administration to tackle the climate crisis. "Every day we're seeing and feeling the harms of fossil-fueled climate change from extreme heat to deadly wildfires and devastating floods."
"As leader of the world's largest oil and gas producer, Biden has more power than anyone to stop expanding the fossil fuels driving this deadly crisis," Su added. "Ahead of the U.N.'s Climate Ambition Summit, thousands of people will be in the streets of New York on September 17 for the March to End Fossil Fuels. This is the perfect opportunity for Biden to declare a climate emergency, use all his executive powers to phase out fossil fuels, and finally secure a legacy as a climate leader."
"We need the biggest players to use their power to avert climate chaos, and to flex their muscle to protect human life rather than protecting corporate polluters."
Greenpeace International policy coordinator Kaisa Kosonen on Friday called out governments across the globe, declaring that "our house is burning down and the people with the power to save us are still sipping coffee pretending it's not happening."
"No government can claim they didn't know how to fix the climate problem," she said. "They've been thrown a lifesaver again and again by scientists, and now we have this report. What the world is waiting for is action; leadership. We need the biggest players to use their power to avert climate chaos, and to flex their muscle to protect human life rather than protecting corporate polluters."
Looking toward COP28, Kosonen argued that "at this year's U.N. climate summit, governments must agree to end the use of oil, gas, and coal in a fast and fair way and make the polluters pay. Leaders can no longer smile and claim they support the Paris agreement and its 1.5°C warming limit, if they fail to give fossil fuels an end date and continue their expansion."
"The solutions are ready—renewables are now the cheapest power source—but we've got to push the fossil fuel industry out of the way," she stressed. "Fossil fuel corporations are holding us hostage, but their time's up."
The UNFCCC report and resulting calls for action follow a series of scientific findings throughout the week that also generated demands for a swift end to fossil fuels, including that Antarctica is warming more quickly than models project, this summer is the hottest on record, and last year greenhouse gas concentrations, global sea level, and ocean heat content all hit record highs.
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