With new leaders in office, Brazil and Colombia dramatically reduced their loss of mature tropical forest in 2023, said Global Forest Watch in an annual report on Thursday. Nonetheless, the world’s tropics lost 3.7 million hectares (more than 14,000 square miles) of primary forest. Losses have run at 3 to 4 million hectares annually for the past two decades.
“The world took two steps forward, two steps back when it comes to this past year’s forest loss,” said Mikaela Weisse, director of Global Forest Watch at the World Resources Institute. The annual report focuses on tropical nations because 96 percent of deforestation occurs in the tropics.
World leaders agreed at the 2021 climate summit to halt forest losses by 2030.
Brazil saw a 36 percent reduction in primary forest loss in 2023 under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said the report, and Colombia halved its losses under President Gustavo Petro Urrego. Forest losses increased in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Bolivia. The DRC lost half a million hectares of primary forest. In Bolivia, losses hit a record high for the third year in a row.