Deforestation

When it comes to saving the world’s rainforests, governments can make a big difference, and fast. Take Indonesia, which in 2012 surpassed Brazil as the world’s leader in tropical rainforest destruction. In 2017, it engineered a 60 percent drop in tree loss from the previous year by more strictly enforcing protections in vulnerable regions. On the other hand, governments can reverse course just as swiftly. Take Brazil, where a decade-long trend of improving forest protections went into reverse. It’s a concern both in and beyond the tropics, with multinational companies coming under increasing pressure to stop doing business with suppliers that ravage the environment. Rainforests host half the species on Earth, help regulate global weather patterns and produce much of the planet’s oxygen. Their disappearance, through burning or felling, creates about 10 percent of the greenhouse gases the world produces in a given year that drive climate change. By one estimate, more tropical tree cover was lost globally in 2016 and 2017 than in any other years this century.

A handful of nations are the guardians of the world’s rainforests, with Brazil home to one third and roughly 15 percent shared by Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Critics blame Brazil’s relapse on the rollback of environmental protections and enforcement in the Amazon, with a surge in forest fires to record levels in 2019 caused in part by loggers incentivized by the government’s disdain for environmental oversight. Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro, who relishes criticism of his attitude toward the Amazon and jokingly refers to himself as “Captain Chainsaw,” faced an angry backlash from trading partners including Germany, Norway and the European Union. As one measure of Amazon deforestation jumped 30% from 2018, Brazil drew up plans in late 2019 to take action. In Congo, agriculture, logging and energy projects pushed deforestation to record levels in 2017. The global bright spot was Indonesia, where authorities imposed a moratorium on developing peatlands, carbon-rich areas where the tree canopy shields waterlogged soil. When cleared, peatlands are drained, leaving a vast area of tinder that can smolder under the ground for years. Combined with better educational campaigns and stricter law enforcement, the moratorium cut primary forest loss to the lowest level in 14 years, notwithstanding setbacks in Sumatra, an island that’s home to endangered tigers and orangutans. Tree loss declined yet further in 2018, before dry weather and a resurgence in illegal slash-and-burn land-clearing contributed to a surge in forest fires in 2019.