Forests are home to more than 80% of plants, animals and insects. Biologically, they are the most diverse ecosystems on land. They play a key role in climate change by mitigating CO2 through carbon sequestration and protecting the watersheds, which supply 75% of global freshwater (UN 2021 a). Since the turn of the millennium, 100 million ha of forest area have been lost due to deforestation (UN 2021 c). The Britannica Encyclopaedia defines deforestation as “the clearing or thinning of forests by humans” (Pimm 2020). Forests are cleared to make space for agriculture, infrastructure buildings, livestock grazing and the timber industry. Today, most deforestation takes place in tropical regions because of high biomass and high economic pressure (National Geographic Society 2019). However, deforestation not only affects the climate, it also increases the occurrence and extent of desertification, soil erosion and flooding worldwide. Furthermore, by logging trees, indigenous people's land is being appropriated and destroyed. (UN 2021 b)
Due to the high global importance of forests, the Sustainable Development Goal 15 (SDG 15) was created in 2015. It seeks to protect and restore terrestrial ecosystems and promote their sustainable use. Additionally, the SDG 15 also aims to “sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss” (UN 2021 b). The REDD+ Initiative is an international framework that tries to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation, where developing countries receive financial support to sustainably manage and protect forests (UN-REDD 2019).
It is clear that deforestation is a major global problem that needs to be addressed. For this reason, we are interested in the current state of forest cover and how and why it has changed in recent years. Consequently, we focused on the following research questions in our project:
The first map gives a broad overview how the global forest cover was distributed in 2018. The country with the highest forest percentage is the Republic of Suriname with 97.6%. Greenland on the other hand has the lowest forest percentage with 0.0005% of the countries area. Each country provides additional data to the GDP, income and population data. Furthermore, there is a gauge that shows how much a country contributes to deforestation abroad. Positive values mean that a country contributes more to deforestation abroad than it does domestically. Negative values mean the opposite. Let’s browse through our map! You can just easily click on a specific country of your choice using the sign with the cursor in the upper left corner and find more information about it. The legend can be found on the right side of the map beside the magnifying glass. The latter allows you to look for a specific location.
The second map visualizes the forest cover change since the millennium and the development of the two main drivers of deforestation – agricultural and artificial surface expansion. With 39.8% loss, Côte d’Ivoire has seen the highest loss of forest cover between 2000 and 2018. In contrast Bahrain witnessed the highest increase of forest cover with 78.4%. Similarly, to the first map you can browse through the map and read more about a country by clicking on the cursor sign and then the country itself. Again, check out the search function (magnifying glass) and the legend on the upper right side of the map. The visualized pie-chart shows four different land use categories, namely agriculture, artificial surfaces, tree cover and the remaining area in percentage of the countries’ territory. The histograms visualize the temporal development of agricultural land and artificial surfaces since the millennium. Please consider the different y-axis for the surface types.
For our first research question we wanted to analyze how forest cover changed since the millennium. The change between the year 2000 and 2018 is displayed on our second map. Depending on the country the trend can be very different, but a regional component is clearly visible. The biggest relative losses can clearly be located across the whole continent of Africa. South America and Southeast Asia also had relatively high losses of forest. It must be considered that the relative loss can sometimes look quite small, even though a big number of hectares was deforested. Especially, if the initial area of forest cover reaches over a big extent, the relative losses seem to be lower than expected. An example is Brazil, where the deforestation does not look too dramatic in the change map, but over fifty million hectares have been cut down since 2000. An increase of forest cover took place in Europe, Russia, the USA, and most prominently in China. The fact that China sticks out can also be seen on the map (more than 20% increase), as well as in the gauge (39.2 million ha).
The second research question is about the drivers of deforestation. Scholars suggest that agricultural expansion and infrastructure development are the main drivers of deforestation (Jayathilake et al. 2021). On average, agricultural land makes up about 30% of the land use share, but the values range from 5% to 60% depending on the country. In general, northern hemisphere countries are having smaller agricultural land share due to colder climate. In contrast artificial surfaces make up an even smaller share (about 0.4%). Developing countries have had an increase of agricultural land over time, whereas northern hemisphere countries were able to reduce their agricultural land area by implementing more efficient farming strategies (Bennetzen et al. 2016). Overall, relationships are visible between agriculture expansion, infrastructure development and deforestation in tropical regions.
Additionally, we can see which countries are responsible for deforestation abroad. Countries with tropical rainforests such as Brazil have high negative net deforestation values, meaning that they exported more goods than they imported. Due to the high amount of forest cover in these countries and the optimal climate conditions, there is a high economical pressure to cut down the forests. Countries in the northern hemisphere, in contrast, contribute much more to deforestation abroad. With a net deforestation of 270’200 ha, China is the largest contributor to deforestation abroad.
These visualisations impressively show how current the issue of deforestation is. The goals set by the UN are far from achieved. With a growing population and consequently a higher demand for agricultural land, forests will continue to be cleared worldwide. Especially, tropical regions are affected. The engagement of initiatives such as REDD+ are therefore particularly important in order to effectively combat deforestation. However, we must be cautious about the findings above, since the data was gathered from various sources and no statistical evaluation to answer our research questions was done. Therefore, more research is needed for a well justified answer including a correlation analysis.