Paris:

Deforestation continued last year at a rate far beyond pledges to end the practice by 2030, according to a major study published Tuesday.

Forests nearly the size of Ireland were lost in 2023, according to two dozen research organisations, NGOs and advocacy groups, with 6.37 million hectares (15.7 million acres) of trees felled and burned.

This “significantly exceeded” levels that would have kept the world on track to eliminate deforestation by the end of the decade, a commitment made in 2021 by more than 140 leaders.

Forests are home to 80 percent of the world’s terrestrial plant and animal species and crucial for regulating water cycles and sequestering CO2, the main greenhouse gas responsible for global warming.

“Globally, deforestation has gotten worse, not better, since the beginning of the decade,” said Ivan Palmegiani, a biodiversity and land use consultant at Climate Focus and lead author of the “Forest Declaration Assessment” report.

“We’re only six years away from a critical global deadline to end deforestation, and forests continue to be chopped down, degraded, and set ablaze at alarming rates.”

In 2023, 3.7 million hectares of tropical primary forest — particularly carbon rich and ecologically biodiverse environments — disappeared, a figure that should have fallen significantly to meet the 2030 objective.

Soya and nickel

In high-risk regions, researchers pointed to backsliding in Bolivia and in Indonesia.~CHECK~

The report said there was an “alarming rise” in deforestation in Bolivia, which jumped 351 percent between 2015 and 2023.

The “trend shows no sign of abating”, it added, with forests largely cleared for agriculture, notably for soya but also beef and sugar.

In Indonesia, deforestation slumped between 2020-2022 but started rising sharply last year.

Ironically, that is partly down to demand for materials often seen as eco-friendly, such as viscose for clothing, and a surge in nickel mining for electric vehicle batteries and renewable energy technologies.

There was better news from Brazil.

While it remains the country with the highest deforestation rates in the world, it has made key progress.

The situation has significantly improved in the Amazon, which has benefited from protective measures put in place by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

However, in the Cerrado, a key tropical savannah below the Amazon, deforestation has increased.

Degraded forests

The report also highlights the role of logging, road building and fires in forest degradation, when land is damaged but not razed entirely.

In 2022, the last year data was available, a forest area twice the size of Germany was degraded.

Erin Matson, senior consultant at Climate Focus, and co-author of the report, said “strong policies and strong enforcement” were needed.

“To meet global forest protection targets, we must make forest protection immune to political and economic whims,” she said.

The report comes in the wake of the European Commission’s proposal last week to postpone by a year (to the end of 2025) the entry into force of its anti-deforestation law, despite protests from NGOs.

“We have to fundamentally rethink our relationship with consumption and our models of production to shift away from a reliance on over exploiting natural resources,” said Matson.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

FILE PHOTO: Police officers use a hose in effort to extinguish wildfires in Ogan Ilir regency, South Sumatra province, Indonesia, September 20, 2023, in this photo taken by Antara Foto.
| Photo Credit: Antara Foto/Nova Wahyudi

As the world gears up for COP28, there is alarming data on the horizon. The year 2023 is on course to possibly becoming the warmest year in recorded history, with temperatures nearing 1.4°C above the pre-industrial era average.

In September 2023, global temperatures reached a record high. The average surface air temperature was 16.38°C, which is 0.93°C higher than the September average between 1991 and 2020. Moreover, it was 0.5°C warmer than the earlier record set in September 2020.

Chart 1 | The chart shows the globally averaged surface air temperature anomalies relative to 1991–2020 for each September from 1940 to 2023.

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The month of September 2023 was approximately 1.75°C above the average temperature of September during the 1850-1900 span, which is considered the pre-industrial benchmark.

From January to September 2023, the global surface air temperature was 0.52°C above the 1991-2020 average and 0.05°C higher than the same period in 2016, the warmest year. During this time frame in 2023, the world’s average temperature was 1.40°C higher than the baseline period of 1850-1900.

According to the Copernicus Climate Bulletin, in September 2023, the majority of Europe experienced temperatures significantly higher than the average from 1991 to 2020. A region stretching from France to Finland and extending to north-western Russia reported its hottest September ever. Notably, both Belgium and the U.K. faced unparalleled heatwave conditions at the start of the month.

Chart 2 | The chart shows the average global surface air temperatures for the 30 warmest months between 1940 and 2023, arranged in ascending order. The temperatures for June, July, August, and September of 2023 are highlighted.

The hottest-ever September of 2023 followed the warmest-ever two months on record — July and August 2023 — when the global mean temperature reached monthly records of 16.95°C and 16.82, respectively. The notable increase in these two months, especially compared to the July 2019 record of 16.63°C, is evident in Chart 2. Moreover, September 2023 is the sole September represented in this chart. The warmest September before 2023 recorded an average surface air temperature 15.88°C, which is not high enough to be included in chart 2.

Chart 3 | The chart shows the global daily surface air temperature (°C) from January 1, 1940 to September 30, 2023, plotted as a time series for each year. The line for 2023 is highlighted.

Other years are marked in grey. The thick black line represents the 1.5°C threshold above pre-industrial levels. For more than 80 days in 2023, the global temperature was at least 1.5° higher than pre-industrial levels. The year 2023 holds the record for the highest number of such days.

In a worrying update, the extent of sea ice has stayed at very low levels for this time of the year in the Antarctic region. Sea ice extent refers to the total area of an ocean where there is at least some sea ice present. Satellite records for September reveal that both daily and monthly extents have plummeted to their lowest annual peaks, with the monthly extent dropping 9% below the norm.

Chart 4 | The chart shows the daily Antarctic sea ice extent from 1979 to September 2023. The year 2023 is highlighted; the median for 1991–2020 is shown as a dotted line.

Meanwhile, the monthly average Arctic sea ice extent in September 2023 reached its annual minimum of 4.8 million km2, about 1.1 million km2 (or 18%) below the 1991-2020 average for September. This value is the fifth lowest in the satellite data record.

Source: European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service

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