Vanishing tropical rainforests

Vanishing tropical rainforests

The world’s largest living store of greenhouse gas is rapidly vanishing and with it the hopes of staving off catastrophic climate change.

35,000

Square meters

2:02

Seconds

Tropical rainforests are home to at least half the world’s living species, and feature rainfall throughout the year.

Yet humans are destroying tropical rainforests faster than any other type of woodland.

If we average the global rate of destruction in 2019 and apply it to one stretch of tropical rainforest, this is how much would be deforested every two minutes.

This graphic, independently produced by Reuters, is sponsored by

These lush landscapes of closed canopy jungle are found around the planet’s middle latitudes, between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. Being near the equator, they are warmed by sunshine year-round. This warmth means the air can hold more moisture, leading to more rainfall than is seen in more temperate rainforests, such as in the cooler U.S. Pacific Northwest, or in drier northern boreal forests like in Canada or Finland.

The destruction of tropical rainforests is so vast that it is difficult for humans to imagine. One accounting by Rainforest Foundation Norway of the damage found that an area of tropical forest roughly the size of France was destroyed between 2002 and 2019.

Here is a breakdown of global deforestation in 2019 alone:

South America, sub-Saharan Africa and the islands of Southeast Asia are home to the largest tropical rainforests in the world. As of 2020, 5.5 million square kilometers of jungle (2.1 million square miles) stretched across Brazil and its neighbors, according to Rainforest Foundation Norway, a global non-profit funded by the Norwegian government and international charities like the Ford Foundation. The Central African rainforest is located mostly in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and rainforests on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra are predominantly under the jurisdiction of Malaysia and Indonesia.

Tropical rainforest cover in 2020

Tropic of Cancer

Amazon, Andes,

Orinoco

Borneo

Central Africa

Sumatra

New Guinea

Tropic of Capricorn

Tropic of Cancer

Central African

rainforest

Borneo

Sumatra

New Guinea

Amazon, Andes,

Orinoco rainforests

Tropic of Capricorn

Tropic of Cancer

Central African

rainforest

Borneo

New Guinea

Sumatra

Amazon, Andes, Orinoco rainforests

Tropic of Capricorn

Tropic of Cancer

Amazon, Andes, Orinoco rainforests

Central African

rainforest

Borneo

New Guinea

Sumatra

Tropic of Capricorn

Tropic of Cancer

Central African

rainforest

Amazon, Andes, Orinoco rainforests

Borneo

New Guinea

Sumatra

Tropic of Capricorn

The island of New Guinea has a rainforest spanning just over 600,000 sq km (about 234,400 sq mi). Deforestation is limited, as extreme poverty and lack of economic development restrict the scale of destruction.

Globally, deforestation extends back to colonial times, but has picked up pace in recent decades. Here’s how the major rainforests have fared since 2001:

2001

The majority of tropical rainforest deforestation is concentrated in four regions. Their intact canopy cover has rapidly disappeared.

2020

Eighteen years later deforested areas have been so heavily altered that they cease to sustain themselves as forests. When humans degrade rainforests by removing trees, sunshine beams down through the thinned canopy, altering the temperature and conditions of the rainforest ecosystem.

The Amazon and connected rainforests make up the largest contiguous tropical rainforest on Earth, but also faced the fastest rate of deforestation between 2002 and 2019. On average, humans destroy about 46 sq km of these forests every day.

In this 18 year period, Borneo and Sumatra faced the least destruction of these four rainforests, but that’s because they already had been mostly destroyed decades earlier.

2001

The data shown in this story reveal human interference only during the last 20 years – since 2001 – but deforestation of tropical rainforests extends further back into history…

Before deforestation

Before large-scale deforestation started in the 1950s, Borneo and Sumatra covered a combined 1.1 million sq km (about 424,700 sq mi).

After deforestation

Over 89% of these two tropical rainforests has been lost or degraded as of 2020.

Borneo was deforested mainly to make way for palm oil plantations. Half of the island’s tree cover was removed completely, while approximately 36% is now considered degraded.

Meanwhile, in Sumatra “the fight is lost,” said Anders Krogh, a tropical forest researcher at non-profit Rainforest Foundation Norway. About 90% has been degraded or deforested.

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What we lose when we lose the rainforest

Logging and land conversion, mainly for agriculture, have wiped out 34% of the world’s original old-growth tropical rainforests, and degraded another 30%. That’s left them more vulnerable to fire and dieback along the forests’ edges.

In losing rainforests, we also lose the services they provide that help make the planet habitable. Here are some of those crucial functions that are lost:

RAIN

SUNLIGHT

INTACT

DEGRADED

DEFORESTED

36%

29%

35%

The dense canopy holds moisture from rain and feeds water vapor back into the atmosphere.

Thinned forest can morph into dry forest, savanna or other biome types.

When the canopy

is thinned, sunlight accesses the forest floor and dries it making it more prone to wildfires.

South America

Africa

Asia

Oceania

North

America

Brazil

Peru

Others

D. R.

of Congo

Others

Indonesia

Others

Papua

New

Guinea

Others

RAIN

WATER

VAPOR

SUNLIGHT

INTACT

DEGRADED

DEFORESTED

36%

29%

35%

When the canopy is thinned, sunlight accesses the forest floor and dries it making it more prone to wildfires.

The dense canopy holds moisture from rain and feeds water vapor back into the atmosphere, driving further rains.

Deforested or thinned forest can morph into dry forest, savanna or other biome types.

South America

Africa

Asia

Oceania

North

America

Brazil

Peru

D. R.

of Congo

Gabon

Indonesia

Papua

New

Guinea

Others

Others

Others

Others

RAIN

WATER

VAPOR

SUNLIGHT

INTACT

DEGRADED

DEFORESTED

36%

29%

35%

The dense canopy holds moisture from rain and feeds water vapor back into the atmosphere, driving further rains. This cycle preserves water in the region.

When the canopy is thinned, sunlight gets access to the forest floor and dries it making it more prone to wildfires.

Deforested or thinned forest can morph into dry forest, savanna or other biome types. It no longer provides the benefits of a

tropical rainforest.

South America

Africa

Asia

Oceania

North

America

Brazil

Peru

Col.

Ven.

Bol.

Rest of

South

America

D. R.

of Congo

Gabon

Rest of

Africa

Indonesia

Rest of

Asia

Papua

New

Guinea

Rest of

Oceania

33% of remaining rainforest is found in Brazil

WATER

VAPOR

RAIN

SUNLIGHT

DEFORESTED

INTACT

DEGRADED

36%

29%

35%

The dense canopy holds moisture from rain and feeds water vapor back into the atmosphere, driving further rains. This cycle preserves water in the region.

When the canopy is thinned, sunlight gets access to the forest floor and dries it making it more prone to wildfires.

Deforested or thinned forest can morph into dry forest, savanna or other biome types. It no longer provides the benefits of a

tropical rainforest.

South America

Africa

Asia

Oceania

North

America

Brazil

Rest of

South America

Rest of

Africa

Rest of

Asia

Rest of

Oceania

Peru

Colombia

Venezuela

Bolivia

D. R.

of Congo

Gabon

Indonesia

Papua

New Guinea

33% of remaining rainforest is found in Brazil

WATER

VAPOR

RAIN

SUNLIGHT

INTACT

DEGRADED

DEFORESTED

36%

29%

35%

The dense canopy holds moisture from rain and feeds water vapor back into the atmosphere, driving further rains. This cycle preserves water in the region.

When the canopy is thinned, sunlight gets access to the forest floor and dries it making it more prone to wildfires.

Deforested or thinned forest can morph into dry forest, savanna or other biome types. It no longer provides the benefits of a tropical rainforest.

North

America

South America

Africa

Asia

Oceania

Brazil

Peru

Colombia

Venezuela

Bolivia

Rest of

South America

D. R.

of Congo

Gabon

Rest of

Africa

Indonesia

Rest of

Asia

Papua

New Guinea

Rest of

Oceania

33% of remaining rainforest is found in Brazil

The Amazon represents the best hope for preserving what rainforest remains, Krogh said. The Amazon and its neighbors – the Orinoco and the Andean rainforests – account for 73.5% of tropical rainforests still intact.

But in Brazil, home to 60% of the Amazon, destruction is mounting. The government of President Jair Bolsonaro has weakened environmental enforcement and legal protections, with deforestation surging to more than 10,000 sq km annually since 2019, levels not seen in more than a decade.

“Brazil has the largest portion of tropical forest in the world and is also losing the most tropical forest,” said Ane Alencar, a geographer with the Amazon Environmental Research Institute. “It’s very worrying.”

Note

Degraded forest cover figures are approximate and based on calculations using deforested and intact forest cover data.

Sources

Rainforest Foundation Norway

Edited by

Simon Scarr, Katy Daigle and Sandra Maler