While the rate of global deforestation slowed by 29% in a decade, the Earth’s tropical rainforests are still under threat from livestock grazing, particularly in South America, and cropland expansion for palm oil plantations in Asia, cautions the latest Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report.

Cropland expansion causes up to 50% of global deforestation, followed by livestock grazing at 38.5%. Oil palm alone accounted for 7% of the worldwide deforestation in the analyzed time frame.

“Halting deforestation would not only avoid emitting significant GHG emissions but would generate significant co-benefits for society as a whole,” Tiina Vähänen, deputy director, forestry division,” FAO tells FoodIngredientsFirst. 

We continue to lose 10 million hectares of forest per year with some 90% of that loss due to the expansion of agricultural land. At the same time, we know that as much as half of global GDP is dependent on the environmental services provided by ecosystems, including forests. Forests are greatly undervalued in our economic systems and with weak governance, making forests more open to conversion.

Glimmer of hope in global assessment
The report has been informed by the Global Forest Resources Assessment Remote Sensing Survey, which shows that the decrease in deforestation was from 11 million hectares a year between 2000 and 2010 to 7.8 million hectares annually between 2010 and 2018.

“This survey is important, not just for the new numbers it gives us but for what it tells us about forest area trends and what’s driving deforestation, also the crucial ability it gives us to monitor how things are evolving,” says Maria Helena Semedo, deputy director-general, FAO. 

“Unsustainable agricultural development and other land use continue to put intense pressure on our forests, especially in many of the poorest countries. But there are win-win solutions which we can and must scale up to feed the world without destroying our forests,” says Semedo.

The new report leverages information from the 2021 analysis, which uncovered a similar pattern.

Main drivers of tropical rainforest destructionOil palm alone accounted for 7% of the worldwide deforestation.
The survey shows that tropical regions of Central America are severely threatened by land-use conversion. Roughly 30% of forests in the Central America tropical moist ecoregion and 25% of its tropical rainforest were lost between 2000 and 2018.

“Less progress in increasing agricultural productivity in many sub-Saharan African countries; due in part to a lack of capacity among smallholders arising from, for example, a lack of access to resources and technologies, has led to larger areas of land being  used for cereal production,  among other key crops,” says Vähänen.

“In such countries, increasing yields of widely cultivated crops and staple foods could be a way to reduce pressure on forests,” Vähänen explains.

Similar phenomena were detected in the region’s tropical dry forest and shrubland. However, the small sample numbers mean further investigations are needed to confirm the findings. 

On a more positive note, there was a slight increase of around 0.5 million hectares in global annual forest area.  

Net forest area losses have more than halved during the survey period. The highest deforestation occurred in South America, followed by Africa. This is despite the slowing of deforestation in these regions.

The loss of tropical forests accounted for more than 90% of the global deforestation from 2000 to 2018, at 157 million hectares, roughly the size of Western Europe. Yet annual deforestation in the tropics slowed from 10.1 million hectares to 7 million hectares annually.Cropland expansion causes up to 50% of global deforestation, followed by livestock grazing at 38.5%. Oil palm alone accounted for 7% of the worldwide deforestation in the analyzed time frame.  

Planted forest areas increased by 46 million hectares from 2000 to 2018. Nearly a quarter of forests planted in this millennium replaced naturally regenerating forests with half the affected regions in South and Southeast Asia.  

According to Vähänen to halt deforestation the following changes need to be enforced:Tropical regions of Central America are threatened by land-use conversion.

• Effective management of forests by strengthening the governance over forests supporting clear tenure rights, particularly of indigenous and local communities.
• Incentives for forest conservation, of which there are a number of policy options, including payments for environmental services, repurposing agricultural subsidies and expanding efforts to reduce forest-risk commodities in supply chains.
• Address potential conflicts with other development needs, particularly the need for food security and addressing poverty. This can be done through integrated landscape management, sustainable increase in agricultural productivity and sustainable forest management.
   

Research outlook and sample size
The FAO-led study is based on the consistent analysis of 400,000 samples by more than 800 local experts from 126 countries and territories. It has helped build national capacity by training experts in the visual analysis of remote sensing imagery to monitor forest and land-use changes.

FAO developed the methodology in collaboration with the Joint Research Center of the European Commission. It used freely available satellite data and the open-source Collect Earth online tool developed with Google, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Spatial Informatics Group of the University of San Francisco, SilvaCarbon and the US Forest Service. The survey received funding from the EU and Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI).