Earth’s intact forests are shrinking ever faster, says scientists

Earth's intact forests shrank annually by nearly 90,000 square kilometres from 2014 to 2016, 20 per cent faster than during the previous 13 years, according to findings presented at a conference in Oxford last week.

Despite UN-led efforts to halt deforestation, nearly 10 per cent of undisturbed forests have been fragmented, degraded or simply chopped down since 2000, according to the analysis of satellite imagery. Average daily loss over the first 17 years of this century was more than 200 sq. km.

"Degradation of intact forest represents a global tragedy, as we are systematically destroying a crucial foundation of climate stability," said Frances Seymour, a senior distinguished fellow at the World Resources Institute, and a contributor to the research.

"Forests are the only safe, natural, proven and affordable infrastructure we have for capturing and storing carbon."

LAST FRONTIERS
The last forest frontiers also play a critical role in maintaining biodiversity, weather stability, clean air, and water quality.

Some 500 million people worldwide depend directly on forests for their livelihood.

So-called "intact forest landscapes" — which can include wetlands and natural grass pastures — are defined as areas of at least 500 sq km with no visible evidence in satellite images of large-scale human use.

Concretely, that means no roads, industrial agriculture, mines, railways, canals or transmission lines.

As of January 2017, there were about 11.6 million sq. km of forests worldwide that still fit these criteria.

"Many countries may lose all their forest wildlands in the next 15 to 20 years," said lead scientist Peter Potapov, an associate professor at the University of Maryland.

On current trends, intact forests will disappear by 2030 in Paraguay, Laos and Equatorial Guinea, and by 2040 in the Central African Republic, Nicaragua, Myanmar, Cambodia and Angola.

In tropical countries, the main causes of virgin forest loss are conversion to agriculture and logging. In other places destruction is driven by fires, mining and energy extraction.

The new results are based on a worldwide analysis of satellite imagery, built on a study first done in 2008 and repeated in 2013.

"The high resolution data, like the one collected by the Landsat programme, allows us to detect human-caused alteration and fragmentation of forest wildlands," said Potapov, at the Intact Forests in the 21st Century conference at Oxford University, and challenged the effectiveness of a global voluntary certification system.

Set up in 1994 and backed by green groups such as the World Wildlife Fund, the self-stated mission of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is to "promote environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial and economically viable management of the world's forests."

Many forest-products carry the FSC label, designed to reassure eco-conscious consumers. But approximately half of all intact forest landscapes inside FSC-certified concessions were lost from 2000 to 2016 in Gabon and the Republic of Congo, the new data showed.

In Cameroon, about 90 percent of FSC-monitored forest wildlands disappeared.

"FSC is an effective mechanism to fragment and degrade remaining intact forest landscapes, not a tool for their protection," Potapov said.

However, national and regional parks have helped to slow the rate of decline. The chances of forest loss was found to be three times higher outside protected areas than inside them, the researchers reported.