Deforestation
Deforestation is changing the global climate.
The Scale of Deforestation: Original vs Remaining Forest
Source: World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development 1999 (via Eric Bettelheim, SFM).From World Resources Institute: The Last Frontier Forests: Ecosystems and Economies on the Edge Major Findings (via Eric Bettelheim, SFM)
Global Figures:
Original Forest (000Km2): 62,203
Total Remaining Forest (000 Km2): 33,363
Total Remaining as a % of Original Forest: 54%,
- Almost half of Earth's original forest cover is gone, much of it destroyed within the past three decades.
- Today, just one fifth of the world's original forest cover remains in large tracts of relatively undisturbed forest -- what WRI calls frontier forest.
- Three countries -- Russia, Canada, and Brazil -- house almost 70 percent of the world's remaining frontier forest.
- 40 percent of forest on Earth today qualifies as frontier forest.
- Seventy-six countries assessed in this study have lost all of their frontier forest.
- 39 percent of Earth's remaining frontier forest is threatened by logging, agricultural clearing, and other human activity.
- Eleven countries -- including Finland, Sweden, Vietnam, Guatemala and Thailand -- are on the verge of losing their frontier forest. These countries maintain less than 5 percent of their original forest as frontier, and all of it is threatened.