Conservationists shocked: tropical jungle destroyed in Switzerland by 2022

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A smaller part of the damage was due to fires, but mainly due to other reasons such as deforestation. Every minute, the equivalent of trees the size of 11 football fields disappear, according to a new calculation from the World Resources Institute (WRI) in Washington, published Tuesday.

According to the report, the total area of ​​tropical forest destroyed within a year only increased in 2016, 2017 and 2020 over the past 20 years. Last year, ten percent more tropical forest was destroyed than in 2021, when about 3.75 million hectares were involved.

The tropical forests in Brazil and in the Democratic Republic of Congo are particularly hard hit. Forest loss has increased most in Ghana, Bolivia and Angola. Indonesia and Malaysia, among others, could have kept the loss of their forests to a minimum.

With the help of the Global Forest Watch platform, numerous conservation organizations led by the WRI have been observing changes in forest landscapes worldwide since 2014, including using satellite technology. On this basis, the WRI annually compiled the report together with researchers from the University of Maryland.

Old-growth forest, ie natural forest largely untouched by humans, is of great importance for the conservation of biodiversity and is especially important for the storage of carbon dioxide (CO2). The authors of the study calculated that the area devastated in 2022 will release 2.7 billion tons of CO2. This is roughly equivalent to India’s annual fossil fuel emissions.

In Switzerland, however, the forest area remained constant according to the calculations. This is also confirmed by the interim results of the fifth National Forest Inventory for the years 2018 to 2022, published in May by the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research.

According to the National Forest Inventory, Switzerland’s forest has suffered from drought and heat in recent years. There are more and more dead and damaged trees in Swiss forests. According to the National Forest Inventory, about every eighth tree in Switzerland is dead and every fourth tree is damaged.

(SDA)

Source: Blick