WASHINGTON, 8th October, 2024 (WAM) -- An area of forest nearly the size of Latvia was destroyed worldwide in 2023, a report by research organisations and civil society groups revealed on Tuesday.
The Forest Declaration Assessment highlights that global deforestation remains 45 percent above the levels needed to meet international goals, putting the world far behind its commitment to halt deforestation by 2030, the German Press Agency (dpa) reported.
More than 140 countries pledged to end deforestation at the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. However, the latest figures show that 6.37 million hectares of forest were lost last year alone, signalling that efforts are lagging significantly behind.
According to the report, progress toward "zero deforestation" is tracked through interim targets set up to 2030, which are compared with actual deforestation rates. Nearly 96 percent of all deforestation occurred in tropical regions, and almost all these areas failed to meet their annual targets.
Agriculture, road construction, fires, and commercial logging were named as the primary causes of deforestation across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Only Oceania, comprising island nations in the Pacific north and east of Australia, met its target for 2023.
However, Ivan Palmegiani of the organisation Climate Focus, one of the lead authors of the report, said a change in course is possible, adding that industrialised nations must rethink their excessive consumption and support forest-rich countries in their conservation efforts.