In this exclamation from Rilke, the totemic verticality of the tree emerges, the most majestic feature of union between heaven and earth. These verses come to mind given the threat of extinction of the largest terrestrial living beings on the planet, such as the Jequitibá-Rosa, the Peroba-Rosa, the Sumaúma, the Castanheiras do Pará or even the North American Sequoias. [I]. More than that, the fear of a world without forests comes to mind. Thomas W. Crowther, from Yale University, leading a team of 38 scientists, warns us that we are already halfway there. “We estimate that more than 15 billion trees are cut down each year, and that the global number of trees has declined by about 46% since the beginning of civilization.” [II]. Proposal in an article from Nature in 2015, this assessment adds that, because they are denser, tropical forests lose many more trees. The next article will specifically address the loss and degradation of tropical forests, with an emphasis on Brazil. Here, the problem will be addressed more globally.
The estimate from the team coordinated by Crowther covers the entire period of civilization's development, as, obviously, deforestation is a much older and more gradual process than the last two centuries of planetary expansion of industrial capitalism. But the deforestation that has occurred since 1800 is of another order of magnitude and continues to accelerate. According to the last two State of the World's Forests (2012 and 2016) from FAO, at the end of the last ice age (11.700 years BP), forests covered 60 million km2 (45% of the Earth's ice-free surface). In 2010, only 15% of this area remained intact. In 2016, the FAO reports the estimate that “in the last five thousand years, 18 million km2 were deforested”, that is, 30% of the original area. It turns out that of this total forests completely removed by 2010, more than half (10 million km2) were removed between 1800 and 2010 [iii]. Evident acceleration, but from 1950 onwards there was an acceleration of acceleration. O Millennium Ecosystem Assessment stated in 2005 (from 2000 data) that “more land was converted into agricultural areas (cropland) in the 30 years after 1950 than in the 150 years between 1700 and 1850”. And he added that “agricultural systems (areas where at least 30% of the landscape is plantations, rotating crops, confined livestock farming or freshwater aquaculture) now cover a quarter of the earth’s surface” [IV]. More recently, the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota estimates that the global area dedicated to agriculture is currently 46 million km2 (~35% of the Earth's ice-free surface), with pastures covering 30 million km2 of this total. [IN], as shown in figure 1.
Note that the areas in gray, not yet converted into plantations or pastures, are basically deserts, permafrosts (Canada and Siberia) and forests. Therefore, it is on what remains of the forests that this expansive pressure from agriculture will be increasingly exerted.
In fact, between 2000 and 2012 alone, we globally lost 2,3 million km2 of forest cover through clearcutting, the equivalent of deforesting 50 football fields per minute, every day of those 13 years, according to Global Forest Watch (GFW) [YOU]. The latest, and very recent, balance sheet of the GFW [VII] shows an increase in global deforestation between 2001 and 2004, stabilization of annual deforestation at around 170 thousand km2 between 2005 and 2011 and a new acceleration from 2011 onwards, so that from 2012 to 2015 there was an average annual loss of forest cover of around of 220 thousand km2, that is, almost one state of São Paulo (248 thousand km2) per year, as shown in figure 2.
Wild areas
If it were possible to choose the most painful and catastrophic aspect of the ongoing acceleration of global deforestation, it would undoubtedly be the loss of so-called wild areas (wilderness areas). For, as defined by James EM Watson and colleagues, they are landscapes of more than 10 km2, which “do not exclude human occupation”, but “remain vital refuges where ecological and evolutionary processes operate with minimal human disturbance, sustaining essential functions at scale.” regional and planetary” [VIII]. The authors demonstrate “alarming losses” of 3,3 million km2 of these global wilderness areas in the two decades since 1990, particularly in the Amazon (30%) and Central Africa (14%). Furthermore, “there has been substantial erosion of these large wild areas in the last two decades, with losses reaching 2,7 million km2”, as shown in figure 3.
As Watson warns, “wilderness areas are being dramatically decimated. We cannot restore them. Once eliminated, the processes that maintain their ecosystems are also gone.”
Projections until 2050
There are many projections about the state of forests until 2030 and until 2050, all of them extremely worrying. Let us select just three, for reasons of space, but also because they are not too discrepant. In 2012, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development published its Environmental Outlook to 2050, in which he states: “Primary forests, richest in biodiversity, are expected to lose 2050% of their area by 13. (...) Primary forests (...) have been declining and it is estimated that they will decrease steadily until 2050, maintaining the base scenario” [IX]. In terms of area, this 13% of primary forests should mean something in the order of 1 million km2. But the loss of non-primary forest formations is not estimated here. In 2015, Jonas Busch and Jens Engelmann of the Center for Global Development projected that “an area of tropical forests the size of India [~3,2 million km2] will be deforested over the next 35 years [2016-2050], burning more of one-sixth of the remaining carbon that can be burned to keep global warming below 2º C” [X]. In the same year, WWF projected a loss of up to 1,7 million km2 between 2010 and 2030, with 80% of this loss occurring on 11 global deforestation fronts [XIV], as shown in figure 4.
Forest shrinkage (dieback)
These huge predicted losses show a vicious circle, in which the amputation and degradation of forests exacerbate droughts and global warming and these, in turn, increase the vulnerability of forests. How far are we from exceeding a critical point (tipping points) in this process, after which forests begin to die “spontaneously”? The latest IPCC assessment (AR5-2014) “projects with reasonable confidence (medium confidence) greater tree mortality in many regions throughout the 21st century, associated with dieback" [XII]. This term is defined as the process of large-scale forest shrinkage due to progressive desiccation “from the outside in” (dieback), this is, from the ends of tree branches. In reality, cases of dieback have already occurred in at least 88 areas of the planet, caused by “hydraulic failure” following prolonged droughts or by infestations worsened by global warming, as demonstrated by a team of researchers led by Craig Allen and several other works [XIII]. In 2010, Allen and colleagues wrote: “The studies compiled here suggest that at least some of the globe's forest ecosystems are already responding to climate change and raise concerns that forests may become increasingly vulnerable to higher rates of tree mortality and withering in response to future warming and drought, even in environments not normally considered water-deficit.”
In the entire multifaceted tragedy of the deterioration of the biosphere, nothing is as brutally and directly destructive of life on Earth as the removal and degradation of forests, processes caused, above all, by the globalization of capitalism and our increasing carnivorism. The world we are creating will be, and already is increasingly so, a world deprived of the beauty of the forests and the animals that inhabit them, a world of mass extinctions of species and in which the lives of those that manage to survive, including possibly ours will become not only precarious, but, above all, spiritually poor.
[I] See Oliver Milman, “Trump plan could open Giant Sequoia monument to logging”. The Guardian, 26/VII/2017.
[II] See TW Crowther et al. (2015). “Mapping tree density at a global scale” Nature, 2/IX/2015.
[III] FAO State of the World forests 2012, p. eleven.
[IV] See Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005. Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Biodiversity Synthesis. WRI, Washington, DC, 2005, pp. 12 and 18.
[IN] Second FAO, “the total area occupied by pastures (livestock grazing) is 3.433 million hectares, equivalent to 26% of the planet's ice-free land surface”. See Livestock's Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options, FAO, 2006.
[YOU] Cf. Matthew C. Hansen et al., “High-Resolution Global Maps of 21st-Century Forest Cover Change”. Science, 342, 6160, 15/XI/2013, pp. 850-853. Loss of forest cover is measured here in trees measuring at least 5 meters and in areas measuring 30 x 30 meters.
[VII] See Mikaela Weisse, Liz Goldman, Nancy Harris, Matt Hansen, Svetlana Turubanova and Peter Potapov, “Global tree cover loss remains high, and emerging patterns reveal shifting contributors”, Global Forest Watch, 18/VII/2017.
[VIII] Cf. James EM Watson et al., “Catastrophic Declines in Wilderness Areas Undermine Global Environmental Targets”, Current Biology, 7/XI/2016. Wilderness areas do not include Antarctica and “other 'rock and ice' and 'lake' ecoregions.”
[IX] See OECD Environmental Outlook to 2050: The Consequences of Inaction, 2012, pp. 22 and 157.
[X] See Jonas Bush & Jens Engelmann, 'The Future of Forests: Emissions from Tropical Deforestation with and without a Carbon Price, 2016-2050. Working Paper 411. Center for Global Development, 2015 (online).
[XIV] See “Saving Forests at Risk”. WWF Living Forests Report, 2015. Chapter 5 (networked).
[XII] CF. IPCC-AR5, 2014, Climate Change. Synthesis Report, p. 35.
[XIII] See Craig D. Allen et al., “A global overview of drought and heat-induced tree mortality reveals emerging climate change risks for forests”. Forest Ecology and Management, 259, 2010, pp. 660-684. See also Brendon Choat et al., “Global convergence in the vulnerability of forests to drought”. Nature, 21/XI/2012 and William R.L. Anderlegg et al., “The roles of hydraulic and carbon stress in a widespread climate-induced forest die-off”. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 109, 1, 13/XII/2011.