300px|Satellite image of deforestation in progress in eastern Bolivia. Worldwide, 10\% of wilderness areas were lost between 1990 and 2015."Un dizième des terres sauvages ont disparu en deux décennies" (Radio Télévision Suisse) citing 350px|Tropical deforestation in 1750-2004 (net loss) 450px|Forest Landscape Integrity Index showing anthropogenic modification of remaining forest. 300px| Dry seasons, exacerbated by climate change, and the use of slash-and-burn methods for clearing tropical forest for agriculture, livestock, logging, and mining are causing wildfires, deforestating the Amazon rainforest. (MODIS satellite image of 2020 Brazil rainforest wildfires) Recent history (1970 onwards)  For instance, FAO estimate that the global forest carbon stock has decreased 0.9\%, and tree cover 4.2\% between 1990 and 2020. The forest carbon stock in Europe (including Russia) increased from 158.7 to 172.4 Gt between 1990 and 2020. In North America, the forest carbon stock increased from 136.6 to 140 Gt in the same period. However, carbon stock decreased from 94.3 to 80.9 Gt in Africa, 45.8 to 41.5 Gt in South and Southeast Asia combined, 33.4 to 33.1 Gt in Oceania, 5 to 4.1 Gt in Central America, and from 161.8 to 144.8 Gt in South America. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) states that there is disagreement about whether the global forest is shrinking or not, and quote research indicating that tree cover has increased 7.1\% between 1982 and 2016. IPCC also writes: «While above-ground biomass carbon stocks are estimated to be declining in the tropics, they are increasing globally due to increasing stocks in temperate and boreal forests […].»  Another cause of deforestation is climate change. 23\% of tree cover losses result from wildfires and climate change increase their frequency and power. The rising temperatures cause massive wildfires especially in the Boreal forests. One possible effect is the change of the forest composition. Deforestation in the Maranhão state of Brazil, 2016 In 2000 the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) found that "the role of population dynamics in a local setting may vary from decisive to negligible", and that deforestation can result from "a combination of population pressure and stagnating economic, social and technological conditions".  The degradation of forest ecosystems has also been traced to economic incentives that make forest conversion appear more profitable than forest conservation. Many important forest functions have no markets, and hence, no economic value that is readily apparent to the forests' owners or the communities that rely on forests for their well-being. From the perspective of the developing world, the benefits of forest as carbon sinks or biodiversity reserves go primarily to richer developed nations and there is insufficient compensation for these services. Developing countries feel that some countries in the developed world, such as the United States of America, cut down their forests centuries ago and benefited economically from this deforestation, and that it is hypocritical to deny developing countries the same opportunities, i.e. that the poor should not have to bear the cost of preservation when the rich created the problem. Soil Deforestation for the use of clay in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro. The hill depicted is Morro da Covanca, in Jacarepaguá Due to surface plant litter, forests that are undisturbed have a minimal rate of erosion. The rate of erosion occurs from deforestation, because it decreases the amount of litter cover, which provides protection from surface runoff. The rate of erosion is around 2 metric tons per square kilometre. This can be an advantage in excessively leached tropical rain forest soils. Forestry operations themselves also increase erosion through the development of (forest) roads and the use of mechanized equipment. The new procedures to get amounts of wood are causing more harm to the economy and overpower the amount of money spent by people employed in logging.Deforestation Across the World's Tropical Forests Emits Large Amounts of Greenhouse Gases with Little Economic Benefits, According to a New Study at CGIAR.org , 4 December 2007. According to a study, "in most areas studied, the various ventures that prompted deforestation rarely generated more than US$5 for every ton of carbon they released and frequently returned far less than US$1". The price on the European market for an offset tied to a one-ton reduction in carbon is 23 euro (about US $35). Rapidly growing economies also have an effect on deforestation. Most pressure will come from the world's developing countries, which have the fastest-growing populations and most rapid economic (industrial) growth. In 1995, economic growth in developing countries reached nearly 6\%, compared with the 2\% growth rate for developed countries. As our human population grows, new homes, communities, and expansions of cities will occur. Connecting all of the new expansions will be roads, a very important part in our daily life. Rural roads promote economic development but also facilitate deforestation. About 90\% of the deforestation has occurred within 100 km of roads in most parts of the Amazon. The European Union is one of the largest importer of products made from illegal deforestation. Forest transition theory The forest transition and historical baselines. The forest area change may follow a pattern suggested by the forest transition (FT) theory, whereby at early stages in its development a country is characterized by high forest cover and low deforestation rates (HFLD countries). Then deforestation rates accelerate (HFHD, high forest cover – high deforestation rate), and forest cover is reduced (LFHD, low forest cover – high deforestation rate), before the deforestation rate slows (LFLD, low forest cover – low deforestation rate), after which forest cover stabilizes and eventually starts recovering. FT is not a "law of nature", and the pattern is influenced by national context (for example, human population density, stage of development, structure of the economy), global economic forces, and government policies. A country may reach very low levels of forest cover before it stabilizes, or it might through good policies be able to "bridge" the forest transition. FT depicts a broad trend, and an extrapolation of historical rates therefore tends to underestimate future BAU deforestation for counties at the early stages in the transition (HFLD), while it tends to overestimate BAU deforestation for countries at the later stages (LFHD and LFLD). Countries with high forest cover can be expected to be at early stages of the FT. GDP per capita captures the stage in a country's economic development, which is linked to the pattern of natural resource use, including forests. The choice of forest cover and GDP per capita also fits well with the two key scenarios in the FT: (i) a forest scarcity path, where forest scarcity triggers forces (for example, higher prices of forest products) that lead to forest cover stabilization; and (ii) an economic development path, where new and better off-farm employment opportunities associated with economic growth (= increasing GDP per capita) reduce the profitability of frontier agriculture and slows deforestation. Historical causes Prehistory The Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse was an event that occurred 300 million years ago. Climate change devastated tropical rainforests causing the extinction of many plant and animal species. The change was abrupt, specifically, at this time climate became cooler and drier, conditions that are not favorable to the growth of rainforests and much of the biodiversity within them. Rainforests were fragmented forming shrinking 'islands' further and further apart. Populations such as the sub class Lissamphibia were devastated, whereas Reptilia survived the collapse. The surviving organisms were better adapted to the drier environment left behind and served as legacies in succession after the collapse. An array of Neolithic artifacts, including bracelets, ax heads, chisels, and polishing tools. Rainforests once covered 14\% of the earth's land surface; now they cover a mere 6\% and experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years. Small scale deforestation was practiced by some societies for tens of thousands of years before the beginnings of civilization. The first evidence of deforestation appears in the Mesolithic period. It was probably used to convert closed forests into more open ecosystems favourable to game animals. With the advent of agriculture, larger areas began to be deforested, and fire became the prime tool to clear land for crops. In Europe there is little solid evidence before 7000 BC. Mesolithic foragers used fire to create openings for red deer and wild boar. In Great Britain, shade-tolerant species such as oak and ash are replaced in the pollen record by hazels, brambles, grasses and nettles. Removal of the forests led to decreased transpiration, resulting in the formation of upland peat bogs. Widespread decrease in elm pollen across Europe between 8400–8300 BC and 7200–7000 BC, starting in southern Europe and gradually moving north to Great Britain, may represent land clearing by fire at the onset of Neolithic agriculture. The Neolithic period saw extensive deforestation for farming land. Stone axes were being made from about 3000 BC not just from flint, but from a wide variety of hard rocks from across Britain and North America as well. They include the noted Langdale axe industry in the English Lake District, quarries developed at Penmaenmawr in North Wales and numerous other locations. Rough-outs were made locally near the quarries, and some were polished locally to give a fine finish. This step not only increased the mechanical strength of the axe, but also made penetration of wood easier. Flint was still used from sources such as Grimes Graves but from many other mines across Europe. Evidence of deforestation has been found in Minoan Crete; for example the environs of the Palace of Knossos were severely deforested in the Bronze Age.Hogan, C. Michael (22 December 2007). "Knossos fieldnotes", The Modern Antiquarian Pre-industrial history Easter Island, deforested. According to Jared Diamond: "Among past societies faced with the prospect of ruinous deforestation, Easter Island and Mangareva chiefs succumbed to their immediate concerns, but Tokugawa shoguns, Inca emperors, New Guinea highlanders, and 16th century German landowners adopted a long view and reafforested."Diamond, Jared (2005) "The world as a polder: what does it all mean to us today?" pp. 522–523 in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive, Penguin Books. . Throughout prehistory, humans were hunter gatherers who hunted within forests. In most areas, such as the Amazon, the tropics, Central America, and the Caribbean,Encyclopćdia Britannica Online School Edition. School.eb.com. Retrieved 29 August 2010. only after shortages of wood and other forest products occur are policies implemented to ensure forest resources are used in a sustainable manner. Three regional studies of historic erosion and alluviation in ancient Greece found that, wherever adequate evidence exists, a major phase of erosion follows the introduction of farming in the various regions of Greece by about 500–1,000 years, ranging from the later Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age. The thousand years following the mid-first millennium BC saw serious, intermittent pulses of soil erosion in numerous places. The historic silting of ports along the southern coasts of Asia Minor (e.g. Clarus, and the examples of Ephesus, Priene and Miletus, where harbors had to be abandoned because of the silt deposited by the Meander) and in coastal Syria during the last centuries BC. Easter Island has suffered from heavy soil erosion in recent centuries, aggravated by agriculture and deforestation."The Mystery of Easter Island", Smithsonian Magazine, 1 April 2007. Jared Diamond gives an extensive look into the collapse of the ancient Easter Islanders in his book Collapse. The disappearance of the island's trees seems to coincide with a decline of its civilization around the 17th and 18th century. He attributed the collapse to deforestation and over-exploitation of all resources. The famous silting up of the harbor for Bruges, which moved port commerce to Antwerp, also followed a period of increased settlement growth (and apparently of deforestation) in the upper river basins. In early medieval Riez in upper Provence, alluvial silt from two small rivers raised the riverbeds and widened the floodplain, which slowly buried the Roman settlement in alluvium and gradually moved new construction to higher ground; concurrently the headwater valleys above Riez were being opened to pasturage. A typical progress trap was that cities were often built in a forested area, which would provide wood for some industry (for example, construction, shipbuilding, pottery). When deforestation occurs without proper replanting, however; local wood supplies become difficult to obtain near enough to remain competitive, leading to the city's abandonment, as happened repeatedly in Ancient Asia Minor. Because of fuel needs, mining and metallurgy often led to deforestation and city abandonment. With most of the population remaining active in (or indirectly dependent on) the agricultural sector, the main pressure in most areas remained land clearing for crop and cattle farming. Enough wild green was usually left standing (and partially used, for example, to collect firewood, timber and fruits, or to graze pigs) for wildlife to remain viable. The elite's (nobility and higher clergy) protection of their own hunting privileges and game often protected significant woodland. Major parts in the spread (and thus more durable growth) of the population were played by monastical 'pioneering' (especially by the Benedictine and Commercial orders) and some feudal lords' recruiting farmers to settle (and become tax payers) by offering relatively good legal and fiscal conditions. Even when speculators sought to encourage towns, settlers needed an agricultural belt around or sometimes within defensive walls. When populations were quickly decreased by causes such as the Black Death, the colonization of the Americas, or devastating warfare (for example, Genghis Khan's Mongol hordes in eastern and central Europe, Thirty Years' War in Germany), this could lead to settlements being abandoned. The land was reclaimed by nature, but the secondary forests usually lacked the original biodiversity. The Mongol invasions and conquests alone resulted in the reduction of 700 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere by enabling the re-growth of carbon-absorbing forests on depopulated lands over a significant period of time. Deforestation of Brazil's Atlantic Forest c.1820–1825 From 1100 to 1500 AD, significant deforestation took place in Western Europe as a result of the expanding human population. The large-scale building of wooden sailing ships by European (coastal) naval owners since the 15th century for exploration, colonisation, slave trade, and other trade on the high seas, consumed many forest resources and became responsible for the introduction of numerous bubonic plague outbreaks in the 14th century. Piracy also contributed to the over harvesting of forests, as in Spain. This led to a weakening of the domestic economy after Columbus' discovery of America, as the economy became dependent on colonial activities (plundering, mining, cattle, plantations, trade, etc.) In Changes in the Land (1983), William Cronon analyzed and documented 17th-century English colonists' reports of increased seasonal flooding in New England during the period when new settlers initially cleared the forests for agriculture. They believed flooding was linked to widespread forest clearing upstream. The massive use of charcoal on an industrial scale in Early Modern Europe was a new type of consumption of western forests; even in Stuart England, the relatively primitive production of charcoal has already reached an impressive level. Stuart England was so widely deforested that it depended on the Baltic trade for ship timbers, and looked to the untapped forests of New England to supply the need. Each of Nelson's Royal Navy war ships at Trafalgar (1805) required 6,000 mature oaks for its construction. In France, Colbert planted oak forests to supply the French navy in the future. When the oak plantations matured in the mid-19th century, the masts were no longer required because shipping had changed. Norman F. Cantor's summary of the effects of late medieval deforestation applies equally well to Early Modern Europe: Industrial era In the 19th century, introduction of steamboats in the United States was the cause of deforestation of banks of major rivers, such as the Mississippi River, with increased and more severe flooding one of the environmental results. The steamboat crews cut wood every day from the riverbanks to fuel the steam engines. Between St. Louis and the confluence with the Ohio River to the south, the Mississippi became more wide and shallow, and changed its channel laterally. Attempts to improve navigation by the use of snag pullers often resulted in crews' clearing large trees 100 to back from the banks. Several French colonial towns of the Illinois Country, such as Kaskaskia, Cahokia and St. Philippe, Illinois, were flooded and abandoned in the late 19th century, with a loss to the cultural record of their archeology.Norris, F. Terry (1997) "Where Did the Villages Go? Steamboats, Deforestation, and Archaeological Loss in the Mississippi Valley", in Common Fields: an environmental history of St. Louis, Andrew Hurley, ed., St. Louis, MO: Missouri Historical Society Press, pp. 73–89. . The wholescale clearance of woodland to create agricultural land can be seen in many parts of the world, such as the Central forest-grasslands transition and other areas of the Great Plains of the United States. Specific parallels are seen in the 20th-century deforestation occurring in many developing nations. Rates of deforestation Slash-and-burn farming in the state of Rondônia, western Brazil Estimates vary widely as to the extent of tropical deforestation.Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2000). Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry. Cambridge University Press. Present-day In 2019, the world lost nearly 12 million hectares of tree cover. Nearly a third of that loss, 3.8 million hectares, occurred within humid tropical primary forests, areas of mature rainforest that are especially important for biodiversity and carbon storage. That’s the equivalent of losing an area of primary forest the size of a football pitch every six seconds. History Global deforestationDuke Press policy studies / Global deforestation and the nineteenth-century world economy / edited by Richard P. Tucker and J. F. Richards sharply accelerated around 1852.E. O. Wilson, 2002, The Future of Life, Vintage .Map reveals extent of deforestation in tropical countries, guardian.co.uk, 1 July 2008. As of 1947, the planet had 15 million to 16 million km2 (5.8 million to 6.2 million sq mi) of mature tropical forests,Maycock, Paul F. Deforestation. WorldBookOnline. but by 2015, it was estimated that about half of these had been destroyed.Ron Nielsen, The Little Green Handbook: Seven Trends Shaping the Future of Our Planet, Picador, New York (2006) . Total land coverage by tropical rainforests decreased from 14\% to 6\%. Much of this loss happened between 1960 and 1990, when 20\% of all tropical rainforests were destroyed. At this rate, extinction of such forests is projected to occur by the mid-21st century. In the early 2000s, some scientists predicted that unless significant measures (such as seeking out and protecting old growth forests that have not been disturbed) are taken on a worldwide basis, by 2030 there will only be 10\% remaining, with another 10\% in a degraded condition. 80\% will have been lost, and with them hundreds of thousands of irreplaceable species. Rates of change A 2002 analysis of satellite imagery suggested that the rate of deforestation in the humid tropics (approximately 5.8 million hectares per year) was roughly 23\% lower than the most commonly quoted rates. A 2005 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated that although the Earth's total forest area continued to decrease at about 13 million hectares per year, the global rate of deforestation had been slowing.Committee On Forestry. FAO (16 March 2001). Retrieved 29 August 2010. On the other hand, a 2005 analysis of satellite images reveals that deforestation of the Amazon rainforest is twice as fast as scientists previously estimated.Satellite images reveal Amazon forest shrinking faster, csmonitor.com, 21 October 2005. From 2010 to 2015, worldwide forest area decreased by 3.3 million ha per year, according to FAO. During this five-year period, the biggest forest area loss occurred in the tropics, particularly in South America and Africa. Per capita forest area decline was also greatest in the tropics and subtropics but is occurring in every climatic domain (except in the temperate) as populations increase.FAO. 2016. Global Forest Resources Assessment 2015. How are the world’s forests changing? An estimated 420 million ha of forest has been lost worldwide through deforestation since 1990, but the rate of forest loss has declined substantially. In the most recent five-year period (2015–2020), the annual rate of deforestation was estimated at 10 million ha, down from 12 million ha in 2010–2015. Africa had the largest annual rate of net forest loss in 2010–2020, at 3.9 million ha, followed by South America, at 2.6 million ha. The rate of net forest loss has increased in Africa in each of the three decades since 1990. It has declined substantially in South America, however, to about half the rate in 2010–2020 compared with 2000–2010. Asia had the highest net gain of forest area in 2010–2020, followed by Oceania and Europe. Nevertheless, both Europe and Asia recorded substantially lower rates of net gain in 2010–2020 than in 2000–2010. Oceania experienced net losses of forest area in the decades 1990–2000 and 2000–2010. Some claim that rainforests are being destroyed at an ever-quickening pace.Worldwatch: Wood Production and Deforestation Increase & Recent Content , Worldwatch Institute The London-based Rainforest Foundation notes that "the UN figure is based on a definition of forest as being an area with as little as 10\% actual tree cover, which would therefore include areas that are actually savanna-like ecosystems and badly damaged forests". Other critics of the FAO data point out that they do not distinguish between forest types,The fear is that highly diverse habitats, such as tropical rainforest, are vanishing at a faster rate that is partly masked by the slower deforestation of less biodiverse, dry, open forests. Because of this omission, the most harmful impacts of deforestation (such as habitat loss) could be increasing despite a possible decline in the global rate of deforestation. and that they are based largely on reporting from forestry departments of individual countries, which do not take into account unofficial activities like illegal logging.The World Bank estimates that 80\% of logging operations are illegal in Bolivia and 42\% in Colombia, while in Peru, illegal logging accounts for 80\% of all logging activities. (World Bank (2004). Forest Law Enforcement.) (The Peruvian Environmental Law Society (2003). Case Study on the Development and Implementation of Guidelines for the Control of Illegal Logging with a View to Sustainable Forest Management in Peru.) Despite these uncertainties, there is agreement that destruction of rainforests remains a significant environmental problem. Methods of analysis Some have argued that deforestation trends may follow a Kuznets curve, which if true would nonetheless fail to eliminate the risk of irreversible loss of non-economic forest values (for example, the extinction of species).Whitehead, John (22 November 2006) Environmental Economics: A deforestation Kuznets curve?, env-econ.net . Some cartographers have attempted to illustrate the sheer scale of deforestation by country using a cartogram. Victor Vescovo. (2006). The Atlas of World Statistics. The Caladan Press. Retrieved 3 August 2012. Satellite image of Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic (right) shows the amount of deforestation on the Haitian side upright=0.9|Deforestation around Pakke Tiger Reserve, India Regions Rates of deforestation vary around the world. Up to 90\% of West Africa's coastal rainforests have disappeared since 1900. Madagascar has lost 90\% of its eastern rainforests.IUCN – Three new sites inscribed on World Heritage List, 27 June 2007. In South Asia, about 88\% of the rainforests have been lost. Mexico, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Bangladesh, China, Sri Lanka, Laos, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Guinea, Ghana and the Ivory Coast, have lost large areas of their rainforest.Chart – Tropical Deforestation by Country & Region. Mongabay.com. Retrieved 4 December 2011.Rainforest Destruction. rainforestweb.org 300px|Satellite imagery of locations of the 2019 Amazon rainforest wildfires as detected by MODIS from August 15 to August 22, 2019 Much of what remains of the world's rainforests is in the Amazon basin, where the Amazon Rainforest covers approximately 4 million square kilometres.The Amazon Rainforest, BBC, 14 February 2003. Some 80\% of the deforestation of the Amazon can be attributed to cattle ranching, as Brazil is the largest exporter of beef in the world. The Amazon region has become one of the largest cattle ranching territories in the world. The regions with the highest tropical deforestation rate between 2000 and 2005 were Central America—which lost 1.3\% of its forests each year—and tropical Asia. In Central America, two-thirds of lowland tropical forests have been turned into pasture since 1950 and 40\% of all the rainforests have been lost in the last 40 years. Brazil has lost 90–95\% of its Mata Atlântica forest. Deforestation in Brazil increased by 88\% for the month of June 2019, as compared with the previous year. However, Brazil still destroyed 1.3 million hectares in 2019. Brazil is one of several countries that have declared their deforestation a national emergency.Amazon deforestation rises sharply in 2007, USATODAY.com, 24 January 2008. Paraguay was losing its natural semi humid forests in the country's western regions at a rate of 15.000 hectares at a randomly studied 2-month period in 2010, Paraguay's parliament refused in 2009 to pass a law that would have stopped cutting of natural forests altogether. As of 2007, less than 50\% of Haiti's forests remained. The World Wildlife Fund's ecoregion project catalogues habitat types throughout the world, including habitat loss such as deforestation, showing for example that even in the rich forests of parts of Canada such as the Mid-Continental Canadian forests of the prairie provinces half of the forest cover has been lost or altered. In 2011 Conservation International listed the top 10 most endangered forests, characterized by having all lost 90\% or more of their original habitat, and each harboring at least 1500 endemic plant species (species found nowhere else in the world). {| class="wikitable sortable" border="0" style="background:#ffffff" align="top" |+ style="text-align:center; background:DarkGreen; color:white;"|Top 10 Most Endangered Forests 2011 |- ! style="background:LightGreen; color:Black"|Endangered forest ! style="background:LightGreen; color:Black"|Region ! style="background:LightGreen; color:Black"|Remaining habitat ! style="background:LightGreen; color:Black"|Predominate vegetation type ! style="background:LightGreen; color:Black"|Notes |- | Indo-Burma | Asia-Pacific | 5\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests | Rivers, floodplain wetlands, mangrove forests. Burma, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, India.Indo-Burma, Conservation International. |- | New Caledonia | Asia-Pacific | 5\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests | See note for region covered.New Caledonia, Conservation International. |- | Sundaland | Asia-Pacific | 7\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests | Western half of the Indo-Malayan archipelago including southern Borneo and Sumatra.Sundaland, Conservation International. |- | Philippines | Asia-Pacific | 7\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests | Forests over the entire country including 7,100 islands.Philippines, Conservation International. |- | Atlantic Forest | South America | 8\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests | Forests along Brazil's Atlantic coast, extends to parts of Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay.Atlantic Forest , Conservation International. |- | Mountains of Southwest China | Asia-Pacific | 8\% | Temperate coniferous forest | See note for region covered.Mountains of Southwest China, Conservation International. |- | California Floristic Province | North America | 10\% | Tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forests | See note for region covered.California Floristic Province , Conservation International. |- | Coastal Forests of Eastern Africa | Africa | 10\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests | Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya, Somalia.Coastal Forests of Eastern Africa, Conservation International. |- | Madagascar & Indian Ocean Islands | Africa | 10\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests | Madagascar, Mauritius, Reunion, Seychelles, Comoros.Madagascar & Indian Ocean Islands, Conservation International. |- | Eastern Afromontane | Africa | 11\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forestsMontane grasslands and shrublands | Forests scattered along the eastern edge of Africa, from Saudi Arabia in the north to Zimbabwe in the south.Eastern Afromontane, Conservation International. | 30 billion for the period 2010–2012. Significant work is underway on tools for use in monitoring developing country adherence to their agreed REDD targets. These tools, which rely on remote forest monitoring using satellite imagery and other data sources, include the Center for Global Development's FORMA (Forest Monitoring for Action) initiativeForest Monitoring for Action (FORMA) : Center for Global Development : Initiatives: Active. Cgdev.org (23 November 2009). Retrieved 29 August 2010. and the Group on Earth Observations' Forest Carbon Tracking Portal.Browser – GEO FCT Portal. Portal.geo-fct.org. Retrieved 29 August 2010. Methodological guidance for forest monitoring was also emphasized at COP-15. The environmental organization Avoided Deforestation Partners leads the campaign for development of REDD through funding from the U.S. government.Agriculture Secretary Vilsack: $1 billion for REDD+ "Climate Progress . Climateprogress.org (16 December 2009). Retrieved 29 August 2010. In 2014, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and partners launched Open Foris – a set of open-source software tools that assist countries in gathering, producing and disseminating information on the state of forest resources. The tools support the inventory lifecycle, from needs assessment, design, planning, field data collection and management, estimation analysis, and dissemination. Remote sensing image processing tools are included, as well as tools for international reporting for Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) and MRV (Measurement, Reporting and Verification) and FAO's Global Forest Resource Assessments. Forest plantations  In order to acquire the world's demand for wood, it is suggested that high yielding forest plantations are suitable according to forest writers Botkins and Sedjo. Plantations that yield 10 cubic meters per hectare a year would supply enough wood for trading of 5\% of the world's existing forestland. By contrast, natural forests produce about 1–2 cubic meters per hectare; therefore, 5–10 times more forestland would be required to meet demand. Forester Chad Oliver has suggested a forest mosaic with high-yield forest lands interspersed with conservation land.
300px|Satellite image of deforestation in progress in eastern Bolivia. Worldwide, 10\% of wilderness areas were lost between 1990 and 2015."Un dizième des terres sauvages ont disparu en deux décennies" (Radio Télévision Suisse) citing 350px|Tropical deforestation in 1750-2004 (net loss) 450px|Forest Landscape Integrity Index showing anthropogenic modification of remaining forest. 300px| Deforestation in New Zealand. Recent history (1970 onwards) Deforestation in Europe. For instance, FAO estimate that the global forest carbon stock has decreased 0.9\%, and tree cover 4.2\% between 1990 and 2020. The forest carbon stock in Europe (including Russia) increased from 158.7 to 172.4 Gt between 1990 and 2020. In North America, the forest carbon stock increased from 136.6 to 140 Gt in the same period. However, carbon stock decreased from 94.3 to 80.9 Gt in Africa, 45.8 to 41.5 Gt in South and Southeast Asia combined, 33.4 to 33.1 Gt in Oceania, 5 to 4.1 Gt in Central America, and from 161.8 to 144.8 Gt in South America. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) states that there is disagreement about whether the global forest is shrinking or not, and quote research indicating that tree cover has increased 7.1\% between 1982 and 2016. IPCC also writes: «While above-ground biomass carbon stocks are estimated to be declining in the tropics, they are increasing globally due to increasing stocks in temperate and boreal forests […].» Deforestation in Canada. Another cause of deforestation is climate change. 23\% of tree cover losses result from wildfires and climate change increase their frequency and power. The rising temperatures cause massive wildfires especially in the Boreal forests. One possible effect is the change of the forest composition. In 2000 the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) found that "the role of population dynamics in a local setting may vary from decisive to negligible", and that deforestation can result from "a combination of population pressure and stagnating economic, social and technological conditions". Illegal gold mining in Madre de Dios, Peru. The degradation of forest ecosystems has also been traced to economic incentives that make forest conversion appear more profitable than forest conservation. Many important forest functions have no markets, and hence, no economic value that is readily apparent to the forests' owners or the communities that rely on forests for their well-being. From the perspective of the developing world, the benefits of forest as carbon sinks or biodiversity reserves go primarily to richer developed nations and there is insufficient compensation for these services. Developing countries feel that some countries in the developed world, such as the United States of America, cut down their forests centuries ago and benefited economically from this deforestation, and that it is hypocritical to deny developing countries the same opportunities, i.e. that the poor should not have to bear the cost of preservation when the rich created the problem. Soil Deforestation in France. Due to surface plant litter, forests that are undisturbed have a minimal rate of erosion. The rate of erosion occurs from deforestation, because it decreases the amount of litter cover, which provides protection from surface runoff. The rate of erosion is around 2 metric tons per square kilometre. This can be an advantage in excessively leached tropical rain forest soils. Forestry operations themselves also increase erosion through the development of (forest) roads and the use of mechanized equipment. The new procedures to get amounts of wood are causing more harm to the economy and overpower the amount of money spent by people employed in logging.Deforestation Across the World's Tropical Forests Emits Large Amounts of Greenhouse Gases with Little Economic Benefits, According to a New Study at CGIAR.org , 4 December 2007. According to a study, "in most areas studied, the various ventures that prompted deforestation rarely generated more than US$5 for every ton of carbon they released and frequently returned far less than US$1". The price on the European market for an offset tied to a one-ton reduction in carbon is 23 euro (about US $35). Rapidly growing economies also have an effect on deforestation. Most pressure will come from the world's developing countries, which have the fastest-growing populations and most rapid economic (industrial) growth. In 1995, economic growth in developing countries reached nearly 6\%, compared with the 2\% growth rate for developed countries. As our human population grows, new homes, communities, and expansions of cities will occur. Connecting all of the new expansions will be roads, a very important part in our daily life. Rural roads promote economic development but also facilitate deforestation. About 90\% of the deforestation has occurred within 100 km of roads in most parts of the Amazon. The European Union is one of the largest importer of products made from illegal deforestation. Forest transition theory The forest transition and historical baselines. The forest area change may follow a pattern suggested by the forest transition (FT) theory, whereby at early stages in its development a country is characterized by high forest cover and low deforestation rates (HFLD countries). Then deforestation rates accelerate (HFHD, high forest cover – high deforestation rate), and forest cover is reduced (LFHD, low forest cover – high deforestation rate), before the deforestation rate slows (LFLD, low forest cover – low deforestation rate), after which forest cover stabilizes and eventually starts recovering. FT is not a "law of nature", and the pattern is influenced by national context (for example, human population density, stage of development, structure of the economy), global economic forces, and government policies. A country may reach very low levels of forest cover before it stabilizes, or it might through good policies be able to "bridge" the forest transition. FT depicts a broad trend, and an extrapolation of historical rates therefore tends to underestimate future BAU deforestation for counties at the early stages in the transition (HFLD), while it tends to overestimate BAU deforestation for countries at the later stages (LFHD and LFLD). Countries with high forest cover can be expected to be at early stages of the FT. GDP per capita captures the stage in a country's economic development, which is linked to the pattern of natural resource use, including forests. The choice of forest cover and GDP per capita also fits well with the two key scenarios in the FT: (i) a forest scarcity path, where forest scarcity triggers forces (for example, higher prices of forest products) that lead to forest cover stabilization; and (ii) an economic development path, where new and better off-farm employment opportunities associated with economic growth (= increasing GDP per capita) reduce the profitability of frontier agriculture and slows deforestation. Historical causes Prehistory The Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse was an event that occurred 300 million years ago. Climate change devastated tropical rainforests causing the extinction of many plant and animal species. The change was abrupt, specifically, at this time climate became cooler and drier, conditions that are not favorable to the growth of rainforests and much of the biodiversity within them. Rainforests were fragmented forming shrinking 'islands' further and further apart. Populations such as the sub class Lissamphibia were devastated, whereas Reptilia survived the collapse. The surviving organisms were better adapted to the drier environment left behind and served as legacies in succession after the collapse. An array of Neolithic artifacts, including bracelets, ax heads, chisels, and polishing tools. Rainforests once covered 14\% of the earth's land surface; now they cover a mere 6\% and experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years. Small scale deforestation was practiced by some societies for tens of thousands of years before the beginnings of civilization. The first evidence of deforestation appears in the Mesolithic period. It was probably used to convert closed forests into more open ecosystems favourable to game animals. With the advent of agriculture, larger areas began to be deforested, and fire became the prime tool to clear land for crops. In Europe there is little solid evidence before 7000 BC. Mesolithic foragers used fire to create openings for red deer and wild boar. In Great Britain, shade-tolerant species such as oak and ash are replaced in the pollen record by hazels, brambles, grasses and nettles. Removal of the forests led to decreased transpiration, resulting in the formation of upland peat bogs. Widespread decrease in elm pollen across Europe between 8400–8300 BC and 7200–7000 BC, starting in southern Europe and gradually moving north to Great Britain, may represent land clearing by fire at the onset of Neolithic agriculture. The Neolithic period saw extensive deforestation for farming land. Stone axes were being made from about 3000 BC not just from flint, but from a wide variety of hard rocks from across Britain and North America as well. They include the noted Langdale axe industry in the English Lake District, quarries developed at Penmaenmawr in North Wales and numerous other locations. Rough-outs were made locally near the quarries, and some were polished locally to give a fine finish. This step not only increased the mechanical strength of the axe, but also made penetration of wood easier. Flint was still used from sources such as Grimes Graves but from many other mines across Europe. Evidence of deforestation has been found in Minoan Crete; for example the environs of the Palace of Knossos were severely deforested in the Bronze Age.Hogan, C. Michael (22 December 2007). "Knossos fieldnotes", The Modern Antiquarian Pre-industrial history Easter Island, deforested. According to Jared Diamond: "Among past societies faced with the prospect of ruinous deforestation, Easter Island and Mangareva chiefs succumbed to their immediate concerns, but Tokugawa shoguns, Inca emperors, New Guinea highlanders, and 16th century German landowners adopted a long view and reafforested."Diamond, Jared (2005) "The world as a polder: what does it all mean to us today?" pp. 522–523 in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive, Penguin Books. . Throughout prehistory, humans were hunter gatherers who hunted within forests. In most areas, such as the Amazon, the tropics, Central America, and the Caribbean,Encyclopćdia Britannica Online School Edition. School.eb.com. Retrieved 29 August 2010. only after shortages of wood and other forest products occur are policies implemented to ensure forest resources are used in a sustainable manner. Three regional studies of historic erosion and alluviation in ancient Greece found that, wherever adequate evidence exists, a major phase of erosion follows the introduction of farming in the various regions of Greece by about 500–1,000 years, ranging from the later Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age. The thousand years following the mid-first millennium BC saw serious, intermittent pulses of soil erosion in numerous places. The historic silting of ports along the southern coasts of Asia Minor (e.g. Clarus, and the examples of Ephesus, Priene and Miletus, where harbors had to be abandoned because of the silt deposited by the Meander) and in coastal Syria during the last centuries BC. Easter Island has suffered from heavy soil erosion in recent centuries, aggravated by agriculture and deforestation."The Mystery of Easter Island", Smithsonian Magazine, 1 April 2007. Jared Diamond gives an extensive look into the collapse of the ancient Easter Islanders in his book Collapse. The disappearance of the island's trees seems to coincide with a decline of its civilization around the 17th and 18th century. He attributed the collapse to deforestation and over-exploitation of all resources. The famous silting up of the harbor for Bruges, which moved port commerce to Antwerp, also followed a period of increased settlement growth (and apparently of deforestation) in the upper river basins. In early medieval Riez in upper Provence, alluvial silt from two small rivers raised the riverbeds and widened the floodplain, which slowly buried the Roman settlement in alluvium and gradually moved new construction to higher ground; concurrently the headwater valleys above Riez were being opened to pasturage. A typical progress trap was that cities were often built in a forested area, which would provide wood for some industry (for example, construction, shipbuilding, pottery). When deforestation occurs without proper replanting, however; local wood supplies become difficult to obtain near enough to remain competitive, leading to the city's abandonment, as happened repeatedly in Ancient Asia Minor. Because of fuel needs, mining and metallurgy often led to deforestation and city abandonment. With most of the population remaining active in (or indirectly dependent on) the agricultural sector, the main pressure in most areas remained land clearing for crop and cattle farming. Enough wild green was usually left standing (and partially used, for example, to collect firewood, timber and fruits, or to graze pigs) for wildlife to remain viable. The elite's (nobility and higher clergy) protection of their own hunting privileges and game often protected significant woodland. Major parts in the spread (and thus more durable growth) of the population were played by monastical 'pioneering' (especially by the Benedictine and Commercial orders) and some feudal lords' recruiting farmers to settle (and become tax payers) by offering relatively good legal and fiscal conditions. Even when speculators sought to encourage towns, settlers needed an agricultural belt around or sometimes within defensive walls. When populations were quickly decreased by causes such as the Black Death, the colonization of the Americas, or devastating warfare (for example, Genghis Khan's Mongol hordes in eastern and central Europe, Thirty Years' War in Germany), this could lead to settlements being abandoned. The land was reclaimed by nature, but the secondary forests usually lacked the original biodiversity. The Mongol invasions and conquests alone resulted in the reduction of 700 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere by enabling the re-growth of carbon-absorbing forests on depopulated lands over a significant period of time. Deforestation in Suriname c.1880–1900 From 1100 to 1500 AD, significant deforestation took place in Western Europe as a result of the expanding human population. The large-scale building of wooden sailing ships by European (coastal) naval owners since the 15th century for exploration, colonisation, slave trade, and other trade on the high seas, consumed many forest resources and became responsible for the introduction of numerous bubonic plague outbreaks in the 14th century. Piracy also contributed to the over harvesting of forests, as in Spain. This led to a weakening of the domestic economy after Columbus' discovery of America, as the economy became dependent on colonial activities (plundering, mining, cattle, plantations, trade, etc.) In Changes in the Land (1983), William Cronon analyzed and documented 17th-century English colonists' reports of increased seasonal flooding in New England during the period when new settlers initially cleared the forests for agriculture. They believed flooding was linked to widespread forest clearing upstream. The massive use of charcoal on an industrial scale in Early Modern Europe was a new type of consumption of western forests; even in Stuart England, the relatively primitive production of charcoal has already reached an impressive level. Stuart England was so widely deforested that it depended on the Baltic trade for ship timbers, and looked to the untapped forests of New England to supply the need. Each of Nelson's Royal Navy war ships at Trafalgar (1805) required 6,000 mature oaks for its construction. In France, Colbert planted oak forests to supply the French navy in the future. When the oak plantations matured in the mid-19th century, the masts were no longer required because shipping had changed. Norman F. Cantor's summary of the effects of late medieval deforestation applies equally well to Early Modern Europe: Industrial era In the 19th century, introduction of steamboats in the United States was the cause of deforestation of banks of major rivers, such as the Mississippi River, with increased and more severe flooding one of the environmental results. The steamboat crews cut wood every day from the riverbanks to fuel the steam engines. Between St. Louis and the confluence with the Ohio River to the south, the Mississippi became more wide and shallow, and changed its channel laterally. Attempts to improve navigation by the use of snag pullers often resulted in crews' clearing large trees 100 to back from the banks. Several French colonial towns of the Illinois Country, such as Kaskaskia, Cahokia and St. Philippe, Illinois, were flooded and abandoned in the late 19th century, with a loss to the cultural record of their archeology.Norris, F. Terry (1997) "Where Did the Villages Go? Steamboats, Deforestation, and Archaeological Loss in the Mississippi Valley", in Common Fields: an environmental history of St. Louis, Andrew Hurley, ed., St. Louis, MO: Missouri Historical Society Press, pp. 73–89. . The wholescale clearance of woodland to create agricultural land can be seen in many parts of the world, such as the Central forest-grasslands transition and other areas of the Great Plains of the United States. Specific parallels are seen in the 20th-century deforestation occurring in many developing nations. Rates of deforestation Deforestation in Venezuela for cattle breeding. Estimates vary widely as to the extent of tropical deforestation.Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2000). Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry. Cambridge University Press. Present-day In 2019, the world lost nearly 12 million hectares of tree cover. Nearly a third of that loss, 3.8 million hectares, occurred within humid tropical primary forests, areas of mature rainforest that are especially important for biodiversity and carbon storage. That’s the equivalent of losing an area of primary forest the size of a football pitch every six seconds. History Global deforestationDuke Press policy studies / Global deforestation and the nineteenth-century world economy / edited by Richard P. Tucker and J. F. Richards sharply accelerated around 1852.E. O. Wilson, 2002, The Future of Life, Vintage .Map reveals extent of deforestation in tropical countries, guardian.co.uk, 1 July 2008. As of 1947, the planet had 15 million to 16 million km2 (5.8 million to 6.2 million sq mi) of mature tropical forests,Maycock, Paul F. Deforestation. WorldBookOnline. but by 2015, it was estimated that about half of these had been destroyed.Ron Nielsen, The Little Green Handbook: Seven Trends Shaping the Future of Our Planet, Picador, New York (2006) . Total land coverage by tropical rainforests decreased from 14\% to 6\%. Much of this loss happened between 1960 and 1990, when 20\% of all tropical rainforests were destroyed. At this rate, extinction of such forests is projected to occur by the mid-21st century. In the early 2000s, some scientists predicted that unless significant measures (such as seeking out and protecting old growth forests that have not been disturbed) are taken on a worldwide basis, by 2030 there will only be 10\% remaining, with another 10\% in a degraded condition. 80\% will have been lost, and with them hundreds of thousands of irreplaceable species. Rates of change A 2002 analysis of satellite imagery suggested that the rate of deforestation in the humid tropics (approximately 5.8 million hectares per year) was roughly 23\% lower than the most commonly quoted rates. A 2005 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated that although the Earth's total forest area continued to decrease at about 13 million hectares per year, the global rate of deforestation had been slowing.Committee On Forestry. FAO (16 March 2001). Retrieved 29 August 2010. On the other hand, a 2005 analysis of satellite images reveals that deforestation of the Amazon rainforest is twice as fast as scientists previously estimated.Satellite images reveal Amazon forest shrinking faster, csmonitor.com, 21 October 2005. From 2010 to 2015, worldwide forest area decreased by 3.3 million ha per year, according to FAO. During this five-year period, the biggest forest area loss occurred in the tropics, particularly in South America and Africa. Per capita forest area decline was also greatest in the tropics and subtropics but is occurring in every climatic domain (except in the temperate) as populations increase.FAO. 2016. Global Forest Resources Assessment 2015. How are the world’s forests changing? An estimated 420 million ha of forest has been lost worldwide through deforestation since 1990, but the rate of forest loss has declined substantially. In the most recent five-year period (2015–2020), the annual rate of deforestation was estimated at 10 million ha, down from 12 million ha in 2010–2015. Africa had the largest annual rate of net forest loss in 2010–2020, at 3.9 million ha, followed by South America, at 2.6 million ha. The rate of net forest loss has increased in Africa in each of the three decades since 1990. It has declined substantially in South America, however, to about half the rate in 2010–2020 compared with 2000–2010. Asia had the highest net gain of forest area in 2010–2020, followed by Oceania and Europe. Nevertheless, both Europe and Asia recorded substantially lower rates of net gain in 2010–2020 than in 2000–2010. Oceania experienced net losses of forest area in the decades 1990–2000 and 2000–2010. Some claim that rainforests are being destroyed at an ever-quickening pace.Worldwatch: Wood Production and Deforestation Increase & Recent Content , Worldwatch Institute The London-based Rainforest Foundation notes that "the UN figure is based on a definition of forest as being an area with as little as 10\% actual tree cover, which would therefore include areas that are actually savanna-like ecosystems and badly damaged forests". Other critics of the FAO data point out that they do not distinguish between forest types,The fear is that highly diverse habitats, such as tropical rainforest, are vanishing at a faster rate that is partly masked by the slower deforestation of less biodiverse, dry, open forests. Because of this omission, the most harmful impacts of deforestation (such as habitat loss) could be increasing despite a possible decline in the global rate of deforestation. and that they are based largely on reporting from forestry departments of individual countries, which do not take into account unofficial activities like illegal logging.The World Bank estimates that 80\% of logging operations are illegal in Bolivia and 42\% in Colombia, while in Peru, illegal logging accounts for 80\% of all logging activities. (World Bank (2004). Forest Law Enforcement.) (The Peruvian Environmental Law Society (2003). Case Study on the Development and Implementation of Guidelines for the Control of Illegal Logging with a View to Sustainable Forest Management in Peru.) Despite these uncertainties, there is agreement that destruction of rainforests remains a significant environmental problem. Methods of analysis Some have argued that deforestation trends may follow a Kuznets curve, which if true would nonetheless fail to eliminate the risk of irreversible loss of non-economic forest values (for example, the extinction of species).Whitehead, John (22 November 2006) Environmental Economics: A deforestation Kuznets curve?, env-econ.net . Some cartographers have attempted to illustrate the sheer scale of deforestation by country using a cartogram. Victor Vescovo. (2006). The Atlas of World Statistics. The Caladan Press. Retrieved 3 August 2012. Satellite image of Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic (right) shows the amount of deforestation on the Haitian side upright=0.9|Deforestation around Pakke Tiger Reserve, India Regions Rates of deforestation vary around the world. Up to 90\% of West Africa's coastal rainforests have disappeared since 1900. Madagascar has lost 90\% of its eastern rainforests.IUCN – Three new sites inscribed on World Heritage List, 27 June 2007. In South Asia, about 88\% of the rainforests have been lost. Mexico, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Bangladesh, China, Sri Lanka, Laos, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Guinea, Ghana and the Ivory Coast, have lost large areas of their rainforest.Chart – Tropical Deforestation by Country & Region. Mongabay.com. Retrieved 4 December 2011.Rainforest Destruction. rainforestweb.org 300px|Deforestation in Ecuador. Much of what remains of the world's rainforests is in the Amazon basin, where the Amazon Rainforest covers approximately 4 million square kilometres.The Amazon Rainforest, BBC, 14 February 2003. Some 80\% of the deforestation of the Amazon can be attributed to cattle ranching, as Brazil is the largest exporter of beef in the world. The Amazon region has become one of the largest cattle ranching territories in the world. The regions with the highest tropical deforestation rate between 2000 and 2005 were Central America—which lost 1.3\% of its forests each year—and tropical Asia. In Central America, two-thirds of lowland tropical forests have been turned into pasture since 1950 and 40\% of all the rainforests have been lost in the last 40 years. Brazil has lost 90–95\% of its Mata Atlântica forest. Deforestation in Brazil increased by 88\% for the month of June 2019, as compared with the previous year. However, Brazil still destroyed 1.3 million hectares in 2019. Brazil is one of several countries that have declared their deforestation a national emergency.Amazon deforestation rises sharply in 2007, USATODAY.com, 24 January 2008. Paraguay was losing its natural semi humid forests in the country's western regions at a rate of 15.000 hectares at a randomly studied 2-month period in 2010, Paraguay's parliament refused in 2009 to pass a law that would have stopped cutting of natural forests altogether. As of 2007, less than 50\% of Haiti's forests remained. The World Wildlife Fund's ecoregion project catalogues habitat types throughout the world, including habitat loss such as deforestation, showing for example that even in the rich forests of parts of Canada such as the Mid-Continental Canadian forests of the prairie provinces half of the forest cover has been lost or altered. In 2011 Conservation International listed the top 10 most endangered forests, characterized by having all lost 90\% or more of their original habitat, and each harboring at least 1500 endemic plant species (species found nowhere else in the world). {| class="wikitable sortable" border="0" style="background:#ffffff" align="top" |+ style="text-align:center; background:DarkGreen; color:white;"|Top 10 Most Endangered Forests 2011 |- ! style="background:LightGreen; color:Black"|Endangered forest ! style="background:LightGreen; color:Black"|Region ! style="background:LightGreen; color:Black"|Remaining habitat ! style="background:LightGreen; color:Black"|Predominate vegetation type ! style="background:LightGreen; color:Black"|Notes |- | Indo-Burma | Asia-Pacific | 5\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests | Rivers, floodplain wetlands, mangrove forests. Burma, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, India.Indo-Burma, Conservation International. |- | New Caledonia | Asia-Pacific | 5\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests | See note for region covered.New Caledonia, Conservation International. |- | Sundaland | Asia-Pacific | 7\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests | Western half of the Indo-Malayan archipelago including southern Borneo and Sumatra.Sundaland, Conservation International. |- | Philippines | Asia-Pacific | 7\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests | Forests over the entire country including 7,100 islands.Philippines, Conservation International. |- | Atlantic Forest | South America | 8\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests | Forests along Brazil's Atlantic coast, extends to parts of Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay.Atlantic Forest , Conservation International. |- | Mountains of Southwest China | Asia-Pacific | 8\% | Temperate coniferous forest | See note for region covered.Mountains of Southwest China, Conservation International. |- | California Floristic Province | North America | 10\% | Tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forests | See note for region covered.California Floristic Province , Conservation International. |- | Coastal Forests of Eastern Africa | Africa | 10\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests | Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya, Somalia.Coastal Forests of Eastern Africa, Conservation International. |- | Madagascar & Indian Ocean Islands | Africa | 10\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests | Madagascar, Mauritius, Reunion, Seychelles, Comoros.Madagascar & Indian Ocean Islands, Conservation International. |- | Eastern Afromontane | Africa | 11\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forestsMontane grasslands and shrublands | Forests scattered along the eastern edge of Africa, from Saudi Arabia in the north to Zimbabwe in the south.Eastern Afromontane, Conservation International. | 30 billion for the period 2010–2012. Significant work is underway on tools for use in monitoring developing country adherence to their agreed REDD targets. These tools, which rely on remote forest monitoring using satellite imagery and other data sources, include the Center for Global Development's FORMA (Forest Monitoring for Action) initiativeForest Monitoring for Action (FORMA) : Center for Global Development : Initiatives: Active. Cgdev.org (23 November 2009). Retrieved 29 August 2010. and the Group on Earth Observations' Forest Carbon Tracking Portal.Browser – GEO FCT Portal. Portal.geo-fct.org. Retrieved 29 August 2010. Methodological guidance for forest monitoring was also emphasized at COP-15. The environmental organization Avoided Deforestation Partners leads the campaign for development of REDD through funding from the U.S. government.Agriculture Secretary Vilsack: $1 billion for REDD+ "Climate Progress . Climateprogress.org (16 December 2009). Retrieved 29 August 2010. In 2014, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and partners launched Open Foris – a set of open-source software tools that assist countries in gathering, producing and disseminating information on the state of forest resources. The tools support the inventory lifecycle, from needs assessment, design, planning, field data collection and management, estimation analysis, and dissemination. Remote sensing image processing tools are included, as well as tools for international reporting for Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) and MRV (Measurement, Reporting and Verification) and FAO's Global Forest Resource Assessments. Forest plantations 300px|Deforestation in Germany. In order to acquire the world's demand for wood, it is suggested that high yielding forest plantations are suitable according to forest writers Botkins and Sedjo. Plantations that yield 10 cubic meters per hectare a year would supply enough wood for trading of 5\% of the world's existing forestland. By contrast, natural forests produce about 1–2 cubic meters per hectare; therefore, 5–10 times more forestland would be required to meet demand. Forester Chad Oliver has suggested a forest mosaic with high-yield forest lands interspersed with conservation land.
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Dry seasons, exacerbated by climate change, and the use of slash-and-burn methods for clearing tropical forest for agriculture, livestock, logging, and mining are causing wildfires, deforestating the Amazon rainforest. (MODIS satellite image of 2020 Brazil rainforest wildfires)
Deforestation in New Zealand.
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Deforestation in Europe.
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Deforestation in Canada.
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Deforestation in the Maranhão state of Brazil, 2016
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Illegal gold mining in Madre de Dios, Peru.
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for the use of clay in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro. The hill depicted is Morro da Covanca, in Jacarepaguá
in France.
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$35). Rapidly growing economies also have an effect on deforestation. Most pressure will come from the world's developing countries, which have the fastest-growing populations and most rapid economic (industrial) growth. In 1995, economic growth in developing countries reached nearly 6\%, compared with the 2\% growth rate for developed countries. As our human population grows, new homes, communities, and expansions of cities will occur. Connecting all of the new expansions will be roads, a very important part in our daily life. Rural roads promote economic development but also facilitate deforestation. About 90\% of the deforestation has occurred within 100 km of roads in most parts of the Amazon. The European Union is one of the largest importer of products made from illegal deforestation. Forest transition theory The forest transition and historical baselines. The forest area change may follow a pattern suggested by the forest transition (FT) theory, whereby at early stages in its development a country is characterized by high forest cover and low deforestation rates (HFLD countries). Then deforestation rates accelerate (HFHD, high forest cover – high deforestation rate), and forest cover is reduced (LFHD, low forest cover – high deforestation rate), before the deforestation rate slows (LFLD, low forest cover – low deforestation rate), after which forest cover stabilizes and eventually starts recovering. FT is not a "law of nature", and the pattern is influenced by national context (for example, human population density, stage of development, structure of the economy), global economic forces, and government policies. A country may reach very low levels of forest cover before it stabilizes, or it might through good policies be able to "bridge" the forest transition. FT depicts a broad trend, and an extrapolation of historical rates therefore tends to underestimate future BAU deforestation for counties at the early stages in the transition (HFLD), while it tends to overestimate BAU deforestation for countries at the later stages (LFHD and LFLD). Countries with high forest cover can be expected to be at early stages of the FT. GDP per capita captures the stage in a country's economic development, which is linked to the pattern of natural resource use, including forests. The choice of forest cover and GDP per capita also fits well with the two key scenarios in the FT: (i) a forest scarcity path, where forest scarcity triggers forces (for example, higher prices of forest products) that lead to forest cover stabilization; and (ii) an economic development path, where new and better off-farm employment opportunities associated with economic growth (= increasing GDP per capita) reduce the profitability of frontier agriculture and slows deforestation. Historical causes Prehistory The Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse was an event that occurred 300 million years ago. Climate change devastated tropical rainforests causing the extinction of many plant and animal species. The change was abrupt, specifically, at this time climate became cooler and drier, conditions that are not favorable to the growth of rainforests and much of the biodiversity within them. Rainforests were fragmented forming shrinking 'islands' further and further apart. Populations such as the sub class Lissamphibia were devastated, whereas Reptilia survived the collapse. The surviving organisms were better adapted to the drier environment left behind and served as legacies in succession after the collapse. An array of Neolithic artifacts, including bracelets, ax heads, chisels, and polishing tools. Rainforests once covered 14\% of the earth's land surface; now they cover a mere 6\% and experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years. Small scale deforestation was practiced by some societies for tens of thousands of years before the beginnings of civilization. The first evidence of deforestation appears in the Mesolithic period. It was probably used to convert closed forests into more open ecosystems favourable to game animals. With the advent of agriculture, larger areas began to be deforested, and fire became the prime tool to clear land for crops. In Europe there is little solid evidence before 7000 BC. Mesolithic foragers used fire to create openings for red deer and wild boar. In Great Britain, shade-tolerant species such as oak and ash are replaced in the pollen record by hazels, brambles, grasses and nettles. Removal of the forests led to decreased transpiration, resulting in the formation of upland peat bogs. Widespread decrease in elm pollen across Europe between 8400–8300 BC and 7200–7000 BC, starting in southern Europe and gradually moving north to Great Britain, may represent land clearing by fire at the onset of Neolithic agriculture. The Neolithic period saw extensive deforestation for farming land. Stone axes were being made from about 3000 BC not just from flint, but from a wide variety of hard rocks from across Britain and North America as well. They include the noted Langdale axe industry in the English Lake District, quarries developed at Penmaenmawr in North Wales and numerous other locations. Rough-outs were made locally near the quarries, and some were polished locally to give a fine finish. This step not only increased the mechanical strength of the axe, but also made penetration of wood easier. Flint was still used from sources such as Grimes Graves but from many other mines across Europe. Evidence of deforestation has been found in Minoan Crete; for example the environs of the Palace of Knossos were severely deforested in the Bronze Age.Hogan, C. Michael (22 December 2007). "Knossos fieldnotes", The Modern Antiquarian Pre-industrial history Easter Island, deforested. According to Jared Diamond: "Among past societies faced with the prospect of ruinous deforestation, Easter Island and Mangareva chiefs succumbed to their immediate concerns, but Tokugawa shoguns, Inca emperors, New Guinea highlanders, and 16th century German landowners adopted a long view and reafforested."Diamond, Jared (2005) "The world as a polder: what does it all mean to us today?" pp. 522–523 in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive, Penguin Books. . Throughout prehistory, humans were hunter gatherers who hunted within forests. In most areas, such as the Amazon, the tropics, Central America, and the Caribbean,Encyclopćdia Britannica Online School Edition. School.eb.com. Retrieved 29 August 2010. only after shortages of wood and other forest products occur are policies implemented to ensure forest resources are used in a sustainable manner. Three regional studies of historic erosion and alluviation in ancient Greece found that, wherever adequate evidence exists, a major phase of erosion follows the introduction of farming in the various regions of Greece by about 500–1,000 years, ranging from the later Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age. The thousand years following the mid-first millennium BC saw serious, intermittent pulses of soil erosion in numerous places. The historic silting of ports along the southern coasts of Asia Minor (e.g. Clarus, and the examples of Ephesus, Priene and Miletus, where harbors had to be abandoned because of the silt deposited by the Meander) and in coastal Syria during the last centuries BC. Easter Island has suffered from heavy soil erosion in recent centuries, aggravated by agriculture and deforestation."The Mystery of Easter Island", Smithsonian Magazine, 1 April 2007. Jared Diamond gives an extensive look into the collapse of the ancient Easter Islanders in his book Collapse. The disappearance of the island's trees seems to coincide with a decline of its civilization around the 17th and 18th century. He attributed the collapse to deforestation and over-exploitation of all resources. The famous silting up of the harbor for Bruges, which moved port commerce to Antwerp, also followed a period of increased settlement growth (and apparently of deforestation) in the upper river basins. In early medieval Riez in upper Provence, alluvial silt from two small rivers raised the riverbeds and widened the floodplain, which slowly buried the Roman settlement in alluvium and gradually moved new construction to higher ground; concurrently the headwater valleys above Riez were being opened to pasturage. A typical progress trap was that cities were often built in a forested area, which would provide wood for some industry (for example, construction, shipbuilding, pottery). When deforestation occurs without proper replanting, however; local wood supplies become difficult to obtain near enough to remain competitive, leading to the city's abandonment, as happened repeatedly in Ancient Asia Minor. Because of fuel needs, mining and metallurgy often led to deforestation and city abandonment. With most of the population remaining active in (or indirectly dependent on) the agricultural sector, the main pressure in most areas remained land clearing for crop and cattle farming. Enough wild green was usually left standing (and partially used, for example, to collect firewood, timber and fruits, or to graze pigs) for wildlife to remain viable. The elite's (nobility and higher clergy) protection of their own hunting privileges and game often protected significant woodland. Major parts in the spread (and thus more durable growth) of the population were played by monastical 'pioneering' (especially by the Benedictine and Commercial orders) and some feudal lords' recruiting farmers to settle (and become tax payers) by offering relatively good legal and fiscal conditions. Even when speculators sought to encourage towns, settlers needed an agricultural belt around or sometimes within defensive walls. When populations were quickly decreased by causes such as the Black Death, the colonization of the Americas, or devastating warfare (for example, Genghis Khan's Mongol hordes in eastern and central Europe, Thirty Years' War in Germany), this could lead to settlements being abandoned. The land was reclaimed by nature, but the secondary forests usually lacked the original biodiversity. The Mongol invasions and conquests alone resulted in the reduction of 700 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere by enabling the re-growth of carbon-absorbing forests on depopulated lands over a significant period of time. Deforestation of Brazil's Atlantic Forest c.1820–1825 From 1100 to 1500 AD, significant deforestation took place in Western Europe as a result of the expanding human population. The large-scale building of wooden sailing ships by European (coastal) naval owners since the 15th century for exploration, colonisation, slave trade, and other trade on the high seas, consumed many forest resources and became responsible for the introduction of numerous bubonic plague outbreaks in the 14th century. Piracy also contributed to the over harvesting of forests, as in Spain. This led to a weakening of the domestic economy after Columbus' discovery of America, as the economy became dependent on colonial activities (plundering, mining, cattle, plantations, trade, etc.) In Changes in the Land (1983), William Cronon analyzed and documented 17th-century English colonists' reports of increased seasonal flooding in New England during the period when new settlers initially cleared the forests for agriculture. They believed flooding was linked to widespread forest clearing upstream. The massive use of charcoal on an industrial scale in Early Modern Europe was a new type of consumption of western forests; even in Stuart England, the relatively primitive production of charcoal has already reached an impressive level. Stuart England was so widely deforested that it depended on the Baltic trade for ship timbers, and looked to the untapped forests of New England to supply the need. Each of Nelson's Royal Navy war ships at Trafalgar (1805) required 6,000 mature oaks for its construction. In France, Colbert planted oak forests to supply the French navy in the future. When the oak plantations matured in the mid-19th century, the masts were no longer required because shipping had changed. Norman F. Cantor's summary of the effects of late medieval deforestation applies equally well to Early Modern Europe: Industrial era In the 19th century, introduction of steamboats in the United States was the cause of deforestation of banks of major rivers, such as the Mississippi River, with increased and more severe flooding one of the environmental results. The steamboat crews cut wood every day from the riverbanks to fuel the steam engines. Between St. Louis and the confluence with the Ohio River to the south, the Mississippi became more wide and shallow, and changed its channel laterally. Attempts to improve navigation by the use of snag pullers often resulted in crews' clearing large trees 100 to back from the banks. Several French colonial towns of the Illinois Country, such as Kaskaskia, Cahokia and St. Philippe, Illinois, were flooded and abandoned in the late 19th century, with a loss to the cultural record of their archeology.Norris, F. Terry (1997) "Where Did the Villages Go? Steamboats, Deforestation, and Archaeological Loss in the Mississippi Valley", in Common Fields: an environmental history of St. Louis, Andrew Hurley, ed., St. Louis, MO: Missouri Historical Society Press, pp. 73–89. . The wholescale clearance of woodland to create agricultural land can be seen in many parts of the world, such as the Central forest-grasslands transition and other areas of the Great Plains of the United States. Specific parallels are seen in the 20th-century deforestation occurring in many developing nations. Rates of deforestation Slash-and-burn farming in the state of Rondônia, western Brazil Estimates vary widely as to the extent of tropical deforestation.Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2000). Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry. Cambridge University Press. Present-day In 2019, the world lost nearly 12 million hectares of tree cover. Nearly a third of that loss, 3.8 million hectares, occurred within humid tropical primary forests, areas of mature rainforest that are especially important for biodiversity and carbon storage. That’s the equivalent of losing an area of primary forest the size of a football pitch every six seconds. History Global deforestationDuke Press policy studies / Global deforestation and the nineteenth-century world economy / edited by Richard P. Tucker and J. F. Richards sharply accelerated around 1852.E. O. Wilson, 2002, The Future of Life, Vintage .Map reveals extent of deforestation in tropical countries, guardian.co.uk, 1 July 2008. As of 1947, the planet had 15 million to 16 million km2 (5.8 million to 6.2 million sq mi) of mature tropical forests,Maycock, Paul F. Deforestation. WorldBookOnline. but by 2015, it was estimated that about half of these had been destroyed.Ron Nielsen, The Little Green Handbook: Seven Trends Shaping the Future of Our Planet, Picador, New York (2006) . Total land coverage by tropical rainforests decreased from 14\% to 6\%. Much of this loss happened between 1960 and 1990, when 20\% of all tropical rainforests were destroyed. At this rate, extinction of such forests is projected to occur by the mid-21st century. In the early 2000s, some scientists predicted that unless significant measures (such as seeking out and protecting old growth forests that have not been disturbed) are taken on a worldwide basis, by 2030 there will only be 10\% remaining, with another 10\% in a degraded condition. 80\% will have been lost, and with them hundreds of thousands of irreplaceable species. Rates of change A 2002 analysis of satellite imagery suggested that the rate of deforestation in the humid tropics (approximately 5.8 million hectares per year) was roughly 23\% lower than the most commonly quoted rates. A 2005 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated that although the Earth's total forest area continued to decrease at about 13 million hectares per year, the global rate of deforestation had been slowing.Committee On Forestry. FAO (16 March 2001). Retrieved 29 August 2010. On the other hand, a 2005 analysis of satellite images reveals that deforestation of the Amazon rainforest is twice as fast as scientists previously estimated.Satellite images reveal Amazon forest shrinking faster, csmonitor.com, 21 October 2005. From 2010 to 2015, worldwide forest area decreased by 3.3 million ha per year, according to FAO. During this five-year period, the biggest forest area loss occurred in the tropics, particularly in South America and Africa. Per capita forest area decline was also greatest in the tropics and subtropics but is occurring in every climatic domain (except in the temperate) as populations increase.FAO. 2016. Global Forest Resources Assessment 2015. How are the world’s forests changing? An estimated 420 million ha of forest has been lost worldwide through deforestation since 1990, but the rate of forest loss has declined substantially. In the most recent five-year period (2015–2020), the annual rate of deforestation was estimated at 10 million ha, down from 12 million ha in 2010–2015. Africa had the largest annual rate of net forest loss in 2010–2020, at 3.9 million ha, followed by South America, at 2.6 million ha. The rate of net forest loss has increased in Africa in each of the three decades since 1990. It has declined substantially in South America, however, to about half the rate in 2010–2020 compared with 2000–2010. Asia had the highest net gain of forest area in 2010–2020, followed by Oceania and Europe. Nevertheless, both Europe and Asia recorded substantially lower rates of net gain in 2010–2020 than in 2000–2010. Oceania experienced net losses of forest area in the decades 1990–2000 and 2000–2010. Some claim that rainforests are being destroyed at an ever-quickening pace.Worldwatch: Wood Production and Deforestation Increase & Recent Content , Worldwatch Institute The London-based Rainforest Foundation notes that "the UN figure is based on a definition of forest as being an area with as little as 10\% actual tree cover, which would therefore include areas that are actually savanna-like ecosystems and badly damaged forests". Other critics of the FAO data point out that they do not distinguish between forest types,The fear is that highly diverse habitats, such as tropical rainforest, are vanishing at a faster rate that is partly masked by the slower deforestation of less biodiverse, dry, open forests. Because of this omission, the most harmful impacts of deforestation (such as habitat loss) could be increasing despite a possible decline in the global rate of deforestation. and that they are based largely on reporting from forestry departments of individual countries, which do not take into account unofficial activities like illegal logging.The World Bank estimates that 80\% of logging operations are illegal in Bolivia and 42\% in Colombia, while in Peru, illegal logging accounts for 80\% of all logging activities. (World Bank (2004). Forest Law Enforcement.) (The Peruvian Environmental Law Society (2003). Case Study on the Development and Implementation of Guidelines for the Control of Illegal Logging with a View to Sustainable Forest Management in Peru.) Despite these uncertainties, there is agreement that destruction of rainforests remains a significant environmental problem. Methods of analysis Some have argued that deforestation trends may follow a Kuznets curve, which if true would nonetheless fail to eliminate the risk of irreversible loss of non-economic forest values (for example, the extinction of species).Whitehead, John (22 November 2006) Environmental Economics: A deforestation Kuznets curve?, env-econ.net . Some cartographers have attempted to illustrate the sheer scale of deforestation by country using a cartogram. Victor Vescovo. (2006). The Atlas of World Statistics. The Caladan Press. Retrieved 3 August 2012. Satellite image of Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic (right) shows the amount of deforestation on the Haitian side upright=0.9|Deforestation around Pakke Tiger Reserve, India Regions Rates of deforestation vary around the world. Up to 90\% of West Africa's coastal rainforests have disappeared since 1900. Madagascar has lost 90\% of its eastern rainforests.IUCN – Three new sites inscribed on World Heritage List, 27 June 2007. In South Asia, about 88\% of the rainforests have been lost. Mexico, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Bangladesh, China, Sri Lanka, Laos, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Guinea, Ghana and the Ivory Coast, have lost large areas of their rainforest.Chart – Tropical Deforestation by Country & Region. Mongabay.com. Retrieved 4 December 2011.Rainforest Destruction. rainforestweb.org 300px|Satellite imagery of locations of the 2019 Amazon rainforest wildfires as detected by MODIS from August 15 to August 22, 2019 Much of what remains of the world's rainforests is in the Amazon basin, where the Amazon Rainforest covers approximately 4 million square kilometres.The Amazon Rainforest, BBC, 14 February 2003. Some 80\% of the deforestation of the Amazon can be attributed to cattle ranching, as Brazil is the largest exporter of beef in the world. The Amazon region has become one of the largest cattle ranching territories in the world. The regions with the highest tropical deforestation rate between 2000 and 2005 were Central America—which lost 1.3\% of its forests each year—and tropical Asia. In Central America, two-thirds of lowland tropical forests have been turned into pasture since 1950 and 40\% of all the rainforests have been lost in the last 40 years. Brazil has lost 90–95\% of its Mata Atlântica forest. Deforestation in Brazil increased by 88\% for the month of June 2019, as compared with the previous year. However, Brazil still destroyed 1.3 million hectares in 2019. Brazil is one of several countries that have declared their deforestation a national emergency.Amazon deforestation rises sharply in 2007, USATODAY.com, 24 January 2008. Paraguay was losing its natural semi humid forests in the country's western regions at a rate of 15.000 hectares at a randomly studied 2-month period in 2010, Paraguay's parliament refused in 2009 to pass a law that would have stopped cutting of natural forests altogether. As of 2007, less than 50\% of Haiti's forests remained. The World Wildlife Fund's ecoregion project catalogues habitat types throughout the world, including habitat loss such as deforestation, showing for example that even in the rich forests of parts of Canada such as the Mid-Continental Canadian forests of the prairie provinces half of the forest cover has been lost or altered. In 2011 Conservation International listed the top 10 most endangered forests, characterized by having all lost 90\% or more of their original habitat, and each harboring at least 1500 endemic plant species (species found nowhere else in the world). {| class="wikitable sortable" border="0" style="background:#ffffff" align="top" |+ style="text-align:center; background:DarkGreen; color:white;"|Top 10 Most Endangered Forests 2011 |- ! style="background:LightGreen; color:Black"|Endangered forest ! style="background:LightGreen; color:Black"|Region ! style="background:LightGreen; color:Black"|Remaining habitat ! style="background:LightGreen; color:Black"|Predominate vegetation type ! style="background:LightGreen; color:Black"|Notes |- | Indo-Burma | Asia-Pacific | 5\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests | Rivers, floodplain wetlands, mangrove forests. Burma, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, India.Indo-Burma, Conservation International. |- | New Caledonia | Asia-Pacific | 5\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests | See note for region covered.New Caledonia, Conservation International. |- | Sundaland | Asia-Pacific | 7\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests | Western half of the Indo-Malayan archipelago including southern Borneo and Sumatra.Sundaland, Conservation International. |- | Philippines | Asia-Pacific | 7\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests | Forests over the entire country including 7,100 islands.Philippines, Conservation International. |- | Atlantic Forest | South America | 8\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests | Forests along Brazil's Atlantic coast, extends to parts of Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay.Atlantic Forest , Conservation International. |- | Mountains of Southwest China | Asia-Pacific | 8\% | Temperate coniferous forest | See note for region covered.Mountains of Southwest China, Conservation International. |- | California Floristic Province | North America | 10\% | Tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forests | See note for region covered.California Floristic Province , Conservation International. |- | Coastal Forests of Eastern Africa | Africa | 10\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests | Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya, Somalia.Coastal Forests of Eastern Africa, Conservation International. |- | Madagascar & Indian Ocean Islands | Africa | 10\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests | Madagascar, Mauritius, Reunion, Seychelles, Comoros.Madagascar & Indian Ocean Islands, Conservation International. |- | Eastern Afromontane | Africa | 11\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forestsMontane grasslands and shrublands | Forests scattered along the eastern edge of Africa, from Saudi Arabia in the north to Zimbabwe in the south.Eastern Afromontane, Conservation International. |
$35). Rapidly growing economies also have an effect on deforestation. Most pressure will come from the world's developing countries, which have the fastest-growing populations and most rapid economic (industrial) growth. In 1995, economic growth in developing countries reached nearly 6\%, compared with the 2\% growth rate for developed countries. As our human population grows, new homes, communities, and expansions of cities will occur. Connecting all of the new expansions will be roads, a very important part in our daily life. Rural roads promote economic development but also facilitate deforestation. About 90\% of the deforestation has occurred within 100 km of roads in most parts of the Amazon. The European Union is one of the largest importer of products made from illegal deforestation. Forest transition theory The forest transition and historical baselines. The forest area change may follow a pattern suggested by the forest transition (FT) theory, whereby at early stages in its development a country is characterized by high forest cover and low deforestation rates (HFLD countries). Then deforestation rates accelerate (HFHD, high forest cover – high deforestation rate), and forest cover is reduced (LFHD, low forest cover – high deforestation rate), before the deforestation rate slows (LFLD, low forest cover – low deforestation rate), after which forest cover stabilizes and eventually starts recovering. FT is not a "law of nature", and the pattern is influenced by national context (for example, human population density, stage of development, structure of the economy), global economic forces, and government policies. A country may reach very low levels of forest cover before it stabilizes, or it might through good policies be able to "bridge" the forest transition. FT depicts a broad trend, and an extrapolation of historical rates therefore tends to underestimate future BAU deforestation for counties at the early stages in the transition (HFLD), while it tends to overestimate BAU deforestation for countries at the later stages (LFHD and LFLD). Countries with high forest cover can be expected to be at early stages of the FT. GDP per capita captures the stage in a country's economic development, which is linked to the pattern of natural resource use, including forests. The choice of forest cover and GDP per capita also fits well with the two key scenarios in the FT: (i) a forest scarcity path, where forest scarcity triggers forces (for example, higher prices of forest products) that lead to forest cover stabilization; and (ii) an economic development path, where new and better off-farm employment opportunities associated with economic growth (= increasing GDP per capita) reduce the profitability of frontier agriculture and slows deforestation. Historical causes Prehistory The Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse was an event that occurred 300 million years ago. Climate change devastated tropical rainforests causing the extinction of many plant and animal species. The change was abrupt, specifically, at this time climate became cooler and drier, conditions that are not favorable to the growth of rainforests and much of the biodiversity within them. Rainforests were fragmented forming shrinking 'islands' further and further apart. Populations such as the sub class Lissamphibia were devastated, whereas Reptilia survived the collapse. The surviving organisms were better adapted to the drier environment left behind and served as legacies in succession after the collapse. An array of Neolithic artifacts, including bracelets, ax heads, chisels, and polishing tools. Rainforests once covered 14\% of the earth's land surface; now they cover a mere 6\% and experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years. Small scale deforestation was practiced by some societies for tens of thousands of years before the beginnings of civilization. The first evidence of deforestation appears in the Mesolithic period. It was probably used to convert closed forests into more open ecosystems favourable to game animals. With the advent of agriculture, larger areas began to be deforested, and fire became the prime tool to clear land for crops. In Europe there is little solid evidence before 7000 BC. Mesolithic foragers used fire to create openings for red deer and wild boar. In Great Britain, shade-tolerant species such as oak and ash are replaced in the pollen record by hazels, brambles, grasses and nettles. Removal of the forests led to decreased transpiration, resulting in the formation of upland peat bogs. Widespread decrease in elm pollen across Europe between 8400–8300 BC and 7200–7000 BC, starting in southern Europe and gradually moving north to Great Britain, may represent land clearing by fire at the onset of Neolithic agriculture. The Neolithic period saw extensive deforestation for farming land. Stone axes were being made from about 3000 BC not just from flint, but from a wide variety of hard rocks from across Britain and North America as well. They include the noted Langdale axe industry in the English Lake District, quarries developed at Penmaenmawr in North Wales and numerous other locations. Rough-outs were made locally near the quarries, and some were polished locally to give a fine finish. This step not only increased the mechanical strength of the axe, but also made penetration of wood easier. Flint was still used from sources such as Grimes Graves but from many other mines across Europe. Evidence of deforestation has been found in Minoan Crete; for example the environs of the Palace of Knossos were severely deforested in the Bronze Age.Hogan, C. Michael (22 December 2007). "Knossos fieldnotes", The Modern Antiquarian Pre-industrial history Easter Island, deforested. According to Jared Diamond: "Among past societies faced with the prospect of ruinous deforestation, Easter Island and Mangareva chiefs succumbed to their immediate concerns, but Tokugawa shoguns, Inca emperors, New Guinea highlanders, and 16th century German landowners adopted a long view and reafforested."Diamond, Jared (2005) "The world as a polder: what does it all mean to us today?" pp. 522–523 in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive, Penguin Books. . Throughout prehistory, humans were hunter gatherers who hunted within forests. In most areas, such as the Amazon, the tropics, Central America, and the Caribbean,Encyclopćdia Britannica Online School Edition. School.eb.com. Retrieved 29 August 2010. only after shortages of wood and other forest products occur are policies implemented to ensure forest resources are used in a sustainable manner. Three regional studies of historic erosion and alluviation in ancient Greece found that, wherever adequate evidence exists, a major phase of erosion follows the introduction of farming in the various regions of Greece by about 500–1,000 years, ranging from the later Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age. The thousand years following the mid-first millennium BC saw serious, intermittent pulses of soil erosion in numerous places. The historic silting of ports along the southern coasts of Asia Minor (e.g. Clarus, and the examples of Ephesus, Priene and Miletus, where harbors had to be abandoned because of the silt deposited by the Meander) and in coastal Syria during the last centuries BC. Easter Island has suffered from heavy soil erosion in recent centuries, aggravated by agriculture and deforestation."The Mystery of Easter Island", Smithsonian Magazine, 1 April 2007. Jared Diamond gives an extensive look into the collapse of the ancient Easter Islanders in his book Collapse. The disappearance of the island's trees seems to coincide with a decline of its civilization around the 17th and 18th century. He attributed the collapse to deforestation and over-exploitation of all resources. The famous silting up of the harbor for Bruges, which moved port commerce to Antwerp, also followed a period of increased settlement growth (and apparently of deforestation) in the upper river basins. In early medieval Riez in upper Provence, alluvial silt from two small rivers raised the riverbeds and widened the floodplain, which slowly buried the Roman settlement in alluvium and gradually moved new construction to higher ground; concurrently the headwater valleys above Riez were being opened to pasturage. A typical progress trap was that cities were often built in a forested area, which would provide wood for some industry (for example, construction, shipbuilding, pottery). When deforestation occurs without proper replanting, however; local wood supplies become difficult to obtain near enough to remain competitive, leading to the city's abandonment, as happened repeatedly in Ancient Asia Minor. Because of fuel needs, mining and metallurgy often led to deforestation and city abandonment. With most of the population remaining active in (or indirectly dependent on) the agricultural sector, the main pressure in most areas remained land clearing for crop and cattle farming. Enough wild green was usually left standing (and partially used, for example, to collect firewood, timber and fruits, or to graze pigs) for wildlife to remain viable. The elite's (nobility and higher clergy) protection of their own hunting privileges and game often protected significant woodland. Major parts in the spread (and thus more durable growth) of the population were played by monastical 'pioneering' (especially by the Benedictine and Commercial orders) and some feudal lords' recruiting farmers to settle (and become tax payers) by offering relatively good legal and fiscal conditions. Even when speculators sought to encourage towns, settlers needed an agricultural belt around or sometimes within defensive walls. When populations were quickly decreased by causes such as the Black Death, the colonization of the Americas, or devastating warfare (for example, Genghis Khan's Mongol hordes in eastern and central Europe, Thirty Years' War in Germany), this could lead to settlements being abandoned. The land was reclaimed by nature, but the secondary forests usually lacked the original biodiversity. The Mongol invasions and conquests alone resulted in the reduction of 700 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere by enabling the re-growth of carbon-absorbing forests on depopulated lands over a significant period of time. Deforestation in Suriname c.1880–1900 From 1100 to 1500 AD, significant deforestation took place in Western Europe as a result of the expanding human population. The large-scale building of wooden sailing ships by European (coastal) naval owners since the 15th century for exploration, colonisation, slave trade, and other trade on the high seas, consumed many forest resources and became responsible for the introduction of numerous bubonic plague outbreaks in the 14th century. Piracy also contributed to the over harvesting of forests, as in Spain. This led to a weakening of the domestic economy after Columbus' discovery of America, as the economy became dependent on colonial activities (plundering, mining, cattle, plantations, trade, etc.) In Changes in the Land (1983), William Cronon analyzed and documented 17th-century English colonists' reports of increased seasonal flooding in New England during the period when new settlers initially cleared the forests for agriculture. They believed flooding was linked to widespread forest clearing upstream. The massive use of charcoal on an industrial scale in Early Modern Europe was a new type of consumption of western forests; even in Stuart England, the relatively primitive production of charcoal has already reached an impressive level. Stuart England was so widely deforested that it depended on the Baltic trade for ship timbers, and looked to the untapped forests of New England to supply the need. Each of Nelson's Royal Navy war ships at Trafalgar (1805) required 6,000 mature oaks for its construction. In France, Colbert planted oak forests to supply the French navy in the future. When the oak plantations matured in the mid-19th century, the masts were no longer required because shipping had changed. Norman F. Cantor's summary of the effects of late medieval deforestation applies equally well to Early Modern Europe: Industrial era In the 19th century, introduction of steamboats in the United States was the cause of deforestation of banks of major rivers, such as the Mississippi River, with increased and more severe flooding one of the environmental results. The steamboat crews cut wood every day from the riverbanks to fuel the steam engines. Between St. Louis and the confluence with the Ohio River to the south, the Mississippi became more wide and shallow, and changed its channel laterally. Attempts to improve navigation by the use of snag pullers often resulted in crews' clearing large trees 100 to back from the banks. Several French colonial towns of the Illinois Country, such as Kaskaskia, Cahokia and St. Philippe, Illinois, were flooded and abandoned in the late 19th century, with a loss to the cultural record of their archeology.Norris, F. Terry (1997) "Where Did the Villages Go? Steamboats, Deforestation, and Archaeological Loss in the Mississippi Valley", in Common Fields: an environmental history of St. Louis, Andrew Hurley, ed., St. Louis, MO: Missouri Historical Society Press, pp. 73–89. . The wholescale clearance of woodland to create agricultural land can be seen in many parts of the world, such as the Central forest-grasslands transition and other areas of the Great Plains of the United States. Specific parallels are seen in the 20th-century deforestation occurring in many developing nations. Rates of deforestation Deforestation in Venezuela for cattle breeding. Estimates vary widely as to the extent of tropical deforestation.Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2000). Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry. Cambridge University Press. Present-day In 2019, the world lost nearly 12 million hectares of tree cover. Nearly a third of that loss, 3.8 million hectares, occurred within humid tropical primary forests, areas of mature rainforest that are especially important for biodiversity and carbon storage. That’s the equivalent of losing an area of primary forest the size of a football pitch every six seconds. History Global deforestationDuke Press policy studies / Global deforestation and the nineteenth-century world economy / edited by Richard P. Tucker and J. F. Richards sharply accelerated around 1852.E. O. Wilson, 2002, The Future of Life, Vintage .Map reveals extent of deforestation in tropical countries, guardian.co.uk, 1 July 2008. As of 1947, the planet had 15 million to 16 million km2 (5.8 million to 6.2 million sq mi) of mature tropical forests,Maycock, Paul F. Deforestation. WorldBookOnline. but by 2015, it was estimated that about half of these had been destroyed.Ron Nielsen, The Little Green Handbook: Seven Trends Shaping the Future of Our Planet, Picador, New York (2006) . Total land coverage by tropical rainforests decreased from 14\% to 6\%. Much of this loss happened between 1960 and 1990, when 20\% of all tropical rainforests were destroyed. At this rate, extinction of such forests is projected to occur by the mid-21st century. In the early 2000s, some scientists predicted that unless significant measures (such as seeking out and protecting old growth forests that have not been disturbed) are taken on a worldwide basis, by 2030 there will only be 10\% remaining, with another 10\% in a degraded condition. 80\% will have been lost, and with them hundreds of thousands of irreplaceable species. Rates of change A 2002 analysis of satellite imagery suggested that the rate of deforestation in the humid tropics (approximately 5.8 million hectares per year) was roughly 23\% lower than the most commonly quoted rates. A 2005 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated that although the Earth's total forest area continued to decrease at about 13 million hectares per year, the global rate of deforestation had been slowing.Committee On Forestry. FAO (16 March 2001). Retrieved 29 August 2010. On the other hand, a 2005 analysis of satellite images reveals that deforestation of the Amazon rainforest is twice as fast as scientists previously estimated.Satellite images reveal Amazon forest shrinking faster, csmonitor.com, 21 October 2005. From 2010 to 2015, worldwide forest area decreased by 3.3 million ha per year, according to FAO. During this five-year period, the biggest forest area loss occurred in the tropics, particularly in South America and Africa. Per capita forest area decline was also greatest in the tropics and subtropics but is occurring in every climatic domain (except in the temperate) as populations increase.FAO. 2016. Global Forest Resources Assessment 2015. How are the world’s forests changing? An estimated 420 million ha of forest has been lost worldwide through deforestation since 1990, but the rate of forest loss has declined substantially. In the most recent five-year period (2015–2020), the annual rate of deforestation was estimated at 10 million ha, down from 12 million ha in 2010–2015. Africa had the largest annual rate of net forest loss in 2010–2020, at 3.9 million ha, followed by South America, at 2.6 million ha. The rate of net forest loss has increased in Africa in each of the three decades since 1990. It has declined substantially in South America, however, to about half the rate in 2010–2020 compared with 2000–2010. Asia had the highest net gain of forest area in 2010–2020, followed by Oceania and Europe. Nevertheless, both Europe and Asia recorded substantially lower rates of net gain in 2010–2020 than in 2000–2010. Oceania experienced net losses of forest area in the decades 1990–2000 and 2000–2010. Some claim that rainforests are being destroyed at an ever-quickening pace.Worldwatch: Wood Production and Deforestation Increase & Recent Content , Worldwatch Institute The London-based Rainforest Foundation notes that "the UN figure is based on a definition of forest as being an area with as little as 10\% actual tree cover, which would therefore include areas that are actually savanna-like ecosystems and badly damaged forests". Other critics of the FAO data point out that they do not distinguish between forest types,The fear is that highly diverse habitats, such as tropical rainforest, are vanishing at a faster rate that is partly masked by the slower deforestation of less biodiverse, dry, open forests. Because of this omission, the most harmful impacts of deforestation (such as habitat loss) could be increasing despite a possible decline in the global rate of deforestation. and that they are based largely on reporting from forestry departments of individual countries, which do not take into account unofficial activities like illegal logging.The World Bank estimates that 80\% of logging operations are illegal in Bolivia and 42\% in Colombia, while in Peru, illegal logging accounts for 80\% of all logging activities. (World Bank (2004). Forest Law Enforcement.) (The Peruvian Environmental Law Society (2003). Case Study on the Development and Implementation of Guidelines for the Control of Illegal Logging with a View to Sustainable Forest Management in Peru.) Despite these uncertainties, there is agreement that destruction of rainforests remains a significant environmental problem. Methods of analysis Some have argued that deforestation trends may follow a Kuznets curve, which if true would nonetheless fail to eliminate the risk of irreversible loss of non-economic forest values (for example, the extinction of species).Whitehead, John (22 November 2006) Environmental Economics: A deforestation Kuznets curve?, env-econ.net . Some cartographers have attempted to illustrate the sheer scale of deforestation by country using a cartogram. Victor Vescovo. (2006). The Atlas of World Statistics. The Caladan Press. Retrieved 3 August 2012. Satellite image of Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic (right) shows the amount of deforestation on the Haitian side upright=0.9|Deforestation around Pakke Tiger Reserve, India Regions Rates of deforestation vary around the world. Up to 90\% of West Africa's coastal rainforests have disappeared since 1900. Madagascar has lost 90\% of its eastern rainforests.IUCN – Three new sites inscribed on World Heritage List, 27 June 2007. In South Asia, about 88\% of the rainforests have been lost. Mexico, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Bangladesh, China, Sri Lanka, Laos, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Guinea, Ghana and the Ivory Coast, have lost large areas of their rainforest.Chart – Tropical Deforestation by Country & Region. Mongabay.com. Retrieved 4 December 2011.Rainforest Destruction. rainforestweb.org 300px|Deforestation in Ecuador. Much of what remains of the world's rainforests is in the Amazon basin, where the Amazon Rainforest covers approximately 4 million square kilometres.The Amazon Rainforest, BBC, 14 February 2003. Some 80\% of the deforestation of the Amazon can be attributed to cattle ranching, as Brazil is the largest exporter of beef in the world. The Amazon region has become one of the largest cattle ranching territories in the world. The regions with the highest tropical deforestation rate between 2000 and 2005 were Central America—which lost 1.3\% of its forests each year—and tropical Asia. In Central America, two-thirds of lowland tropical forests have been turned into pasture since 1950 and 40\% of all the rainforests have been lost in the last 40 years. Brazil has lost 90–95\% of its Mata Atlântica forest. Deforestation in Brazil increased by 88\% for the month of June 2019, as compared with the previous year. However, Brazil still destroyed 1.3 million hectares in 2019. Brazil is one of several countries that have declared their deforestation a national emergency.Amazon deforestation rises sharply in 2007, USATODAY.com, 24 January 2008. Paraguay was losing its natural semi humid forests in the country's western regions at a rate of 15.000 hectares at a randomly studied 2-month period in 2010, Paraguay's parliament refused in 2009 to pass a law that would have stopped cutting of natural forests altogether. As of 2007, less than 50\% of Haiti's forests remained. The World Wildlife Fund's ecoregion project catalogues habitat types throughout the world, including habitat loss such as deforestation, showing for example that even in the rich forests of parts of Canada such as the Mid-Continental Canadian forests of the prairie provinces half of the forest cover has been lost or altered. In 2011 Conservation International listed the top 10 most endangered forests, characterized by having all lost 90\% or more of their original habitat, and each harboring at least 1500 endemic plant species (species found nowhere else in the world). {| class="wikitable sortable" border="0" style="background:#ffffff" align="top" |+ style="text-align:center; background:DarkGreen; color:white;"|Top 10 Most Endangered Forests 2011 |- ! style="background:LightGreen; color:Black"|Endangered forest ! style="background:LightGreen; color:Black"|Region ! style="background:LightGreen; color:Black"|Remaining habitat ! style="background:LightGreen; color:Black"|Predominate vegetation type ! style="background:LightGreen; color:Black"|Notes |- | Indo-Burma | Asia-Pacific | 5\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests | Rivers, floodplain wetlands, mangrove forests. Burma, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, India.Indo-Burma, Conservation International. |- | New Caledonia | Asia-Pacific | 5\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests | See note for region covered.New Caledonia, Conservation International. |- | Sundaland | Asia-Pacific | 7\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests | Western half of the Indo-Malayan archipelago including southern Borneo and Sumatra.Sundaland, Conservation International. |- | Philippines | Asia-Pacific | 7\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests | Forests over the entire country including 7,100 islands.Philippines, Conservation International. |- | Atlantic Forest | South America | 8\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests | Forests along Brazil's Atlantic coast, extends to parts of Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay.Atlantic Forest , Conservation International. |- | Mountains of Southwest China | Asia-Pacific | 8\% | Temperate coniferous forest | See note for region covered.Mountains of Southwest China, Conservation International. |- | California Floristic Province | North America | 10\% | Tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forests | See note for region covered.California Floristic Province , Conservation International. |- | Coastal Forests of Eastern Africa | Africa | 10\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests | Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya, Somalia.Coastal Forests of Eastern Africa, Conservation International. |- | Madagascar & Indian Ocean Islands | Africa | 10\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests | Madagascar, Mauritius, Reunion, Seychelles, Comoros.Madagascar & Indian Ocean Islands, Conservation International. |- | Eastern Afromontane | Africa | 11\% | Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forestsMontane grasslands and shrublands | Forests scattered along the eastern edge of Africa, from Saudi Arabia in the north to Zimbabwe in the south.Eastern Afromontane, Conservation International. |
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300px|Deforestation in Germany.