2 million hectares of Queensland forest destroyed

 From The Guardian

More than 2m hectares (4.94m acres) of bushland in Queensland that included large swathes of possible koala habitat has been cleared over a five-year period, new analysis shows.

The research, commissioned by Greenpeace and conducted by the University of Queensland academic Martin Taylor, found almost all land clearing that occurred in the state between 2016 and 2021 was in areas where threatened species habitat was “likely to occur”.

Almost two-thirds of the cleared area, or 1.3m hectares, was marked by the Queensland government as “category x”, meaning it was exempt from state vegetation laws that regulate land clearing. Some 500,000 hectares of that land was koala habitat, the report said.

Taylor, an adjunct professor at the University of Queensland and former WWF-Australia conservation scientist, conducted the analysis by comparing state government land clearing data to federally mapped areas of environmental significance.

The majority of recorded land clearing occurred in regrowth forest that was more than 15 years old, which Taylor said made it capable of providing rich habitat for native animals.

“Industry voices like to say this is just controlling knee-high regrowth, so it’s just vegetation management,” he said. “[But] a 15-year-old eucalypt forest can be at least 10 to 15 metres high – they are forests.”

Taylor said that while laws in Queensland allow for regrowth forests to be reclassified as remnant once they mature, the requirements to do so are unclear.

“A lot of regrowth 15 years and older could have already become what they define as remnant, making it more difficult to clear,” he said.

Gemma Plesman, a senior campaigner at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said the report documented deforestation on a “frightening” scale. She said the state’s annual statewide land cover and tree study (Slats) shows land clearing was driven by beef production.

According to the beef industry, more than 10m cattle graze on Queensland pastures, making it the biggest beef producing state in the country.

“Fast food chains and retailers should be aware that the beef they are selling could come from properties that have bulldozed koala habitat with no government oversight,” Plesman said.

Plesman said environmental law reforms being developed by the federal government needed to address concerns around deforestation in Queensland to be effective.

“This shocking data should be a wake-up call,” she said. “They must address what has made Australia a global hotspot for deforestation.”

The Wilderness Society Queensland campaign manager, Hannah Schuch, said deforestation in Queensland was driving biodiversity loss.

“It’s having an impact on iconic native species like the koala, the greater glider, the red goshawk, it’s tearing down their homes and pushing them towards extinction,” she said.

“We know that erosion and sediment runoff from deforestation is another threat to the already at-risk Great Barrier Reef,” she said.

A spokesperson for the federal environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, said the government was in the consultation process to develop new national environment laws. However, three organisations familiar with the draft laws say they would continue to allow widespread deforestation.

Michael Guerin, the chief executive of Queensland farming body AgForce, questioned the accuracy of the Slats data which was used in Taylor’s analysis. He said deforestation rates were overstated. [Of course he did]

He suggested there should be an on-the-ground survey to confirm deforestation rates. [which is much more expensive and not necessarily more accurate. In fact aerial surveys often miss small areas of clearing, meaning the real total could be higher.]

“Let’s come out and ground truth it,” Guerin said. “Let’s get out on the landscape and spend the money and time so we’re confident about what’s happening. The industry and community is up for that.” [yeah, right]

Australia's "decline" in emissions is solely due to LULUCF (Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry)    There have already been questions and accusations that the data are dodgy.  One claim is that partially cleared land is not picked up by the satellites; only fully cleared land is.  This latest analysis simply adds to the evidence.  

Oh, and I beg you: stop eating beef.  

Drivers of deforestation

From Our World in Data

Every year the world loses around 5 million hectares of forest. 95% of this occurs in the tropics. At least three-quarters of this is driven by agriculture – clearing forests to grow crops, raise livestock and produce products such as paper.1

If we want to tackle deforestation we need to understand two key questions: where we’re losing forests, and what activities are driving it. This allows us to target our efforts towards specific industries, products, or countries where they will have the greatest impact.

In a study published in Global Environmental Change, Florence Pendrill and colleagues addressed both of these questions.2 They quantified how much and where deforestation occurs from the expansion of croplands, pasture and tree plantations (for logging), and what products are grown on this converted land. They also combined this with global trade flows to assess how much of this deforestation was driven by international trade – we look at the role of trade specifically in a related article.

Here we’ll look at both where tropical deforestation is happening and what products are driving it.

Brazil and Indonesia account for almost half of tropical deforestation

The study by Pendrill et al. (2019) found that, between 2005 and 2013, the tropics lost an average of 5.5 million hectares of forest per year to agricultural land. That was a decade ago, but the world is still losing a similar amount today: using satellite data, researchers at Global Forest Watch estimate that global deforestation in 2019 was around 5.4 million hectares.3 95% of this was in the tropics. But where in the tropics did we lose this forest?

In the chart we see the share of tropical deforestation by country and region. It’s measured as the annual average between 2010 and 2014.

One-third of tropical deforestation happened in Brazil. That was 1.7 million hectares each year. The other single country where large forest areas are lost is Indonesia – it accounted for 14%. This means around half (47%) of tropical deforestation took place in Brazil and Indonesia. Again, if we look at more recent satellite data we find that this is still true today: in 2019, the world lost 5.4 million hectares to deforestation, with Brazil and Indonesia accounting for 52% of it.4 As we will see later, the expansion of pasture for beef production, croplands for soy and palm oil, and increasingly conversion of primary forest to tree plantations for paper and pulp have been the key drivers of this.

The expansion of pasture lands have also had a major impact on land use in the rest of the Americas – outside of Brazil, Latin America accounted for around one-fifth of deforestation.

The expansion of agricultural land in Africa accounted for around 17.5% of deforestation. This may slightly underestimate the loss of forests in Africa, for two reasons. Much of Africa’s deforestation has been driven by subsistence agricultural activities, which are not always fully captured in national statistics. Secondly, depending on the permanence of agricultural activities such as slash-and-burn farming, some of this forest loss might be classified as temporary forest degradation rather than permanent deforestation.

Beef, soy and palm oil are responsible for 60% of tropical deforestation

If we want to tackle deforestation we also need to know what causes it. That allows us to avoid the foods that drive deforestation or innovate the ways we produce them.

In the chart here we see the breakdown of tropical deforestation by the types of agricultural production.

Beef stands out immediately. The expansion of pasture land to raise cattle was responsible for 41% of tropical deforestation. That’s 2.1 million hectares every year – about half the size of the Netherlands. Most of this converted land came from Brazil; its expansion of beef production accounts for one-quarter (24%) of tropical deforestation. This also means that most (72%) deforestation in Brazil is driven by cattle ranching.5 Cattle in other parts of Latin America – such as Argentina and Paraguay – also accounted for a large amount of deforestation – 11% of the total. Most deforestation for beef therefore occurs in Latin America, with another 4% happening in Africa.

Palm oil and soy often claim the headlines for their environmental impact. They are categorised as ‘oilseeds’, which also include a range of smaller commodities such as sunflower, rapeseed, and sesame. They drove 18% of deforestation. Here we see that Indonesian palm oil was the biggest component of this. In neighbouring Malaysia the expansion of oil seeds was also a major driver of forest loss. Soybeans are the most common oilseed in Latin America. While many people immediately think of food products such as tofu or soy milk, most of global soybean production is used as feed for livestock, or biofuels. Just 6% is used for direct human food. The impact of soy production is one we look at in more detail in a related article.

Combined, beef and oilseeds account for nearly 60% of deforestation.

If we add the third largest driver – forestry products, which is dominated by paper but also includes timber – then we cover almost three-quarters. Across Europe and North America, forestry products mainly come from managed plantation forests that have been established for a long period of time, or are grown on previously unforested land. This is different from most tropical countries where forestry products also come from the logging of primary rainforests or their replacement with plantations. This destroys primary rainforests and, as shown in the chart, has been an important driver of deforestation in Indonesia and elsewhere in Asia.

We can tackle a lot of deforestation by focusing on a few key supply chains

If almost three-quarters of tropical deforestation is driven by the production of a few key products – beef, soybeans, palm oil, and paper – then we can achieve a lot by focusing our efforts on these supply chains.

There are some signs that progress is possible. Soybean production in Brazil was once also an important driver of deforestation in the Amazon region.6 In 2006, under pressure from retailers and NGOs, the world’s major soybean traders signed Brazil’s Soy Moratorium (SoyM) – the world’s first voluntary zero-deforestation agreement. Traders agreed that they would not purchase soy that was grown on deforested lands in the Brazilian Amazon after July 2006. Overall, it was a success: in the two years before the agreement, 30% of soybean expansion in the region came at the expense of forest; afterwards, deforestation declined dramatically and by 2014 only 1% of expansion was turning forests into land for oilseed production.7,8

But, as we show in our article on the impact of soy, there are also lessons to learn about how to implement these commitments more effectively. There is evidence that while the moratorium reduced deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon, some of this deforestation may have ‘leaked’ to neighbouring regions. Soybean production has shifted from the Amazon to the Cerrado region south of the Amazonas, often at the expense of forests there.9 This suggests that zero-deforestation agreements can be effective but must be considered in the wider context of how they shape forest and agricultural changes elsewhere. To combat this, researchers have suggested the SoyM be expanded to not only include the Amazon but also regions such as the Cerrado.10

If we can take similar action in the other industries – beef, palm oil and paper – then there is the potential to cut out a large share of deforestation today.

Looking to the future, a shift in focus towards Sub-Saharan Africa looks likely. The demands for increased agricultural production in Africa are going to be large, and could come at the cost of forests.11 Solutions there will have to focus on major improvements in crop yields so African farmers can produce more food without increasing the amount of land they need to do so.

Alternative ways of making high-quality protein could also be transformative. Beef is the leading driver of deforestation, and the demand for meat across the world will continue to grow in the coming decades. Technological innovations in meat substitute and cultured meat products would allow people to continue eating meat-like products without the destruction of tropical forests that come with it.

One of the biggest steps you personally can take to reduce emissions and avert climate catastrophe is to stop eating beef and drinking milk.  

The Amazon could trigger a cascade of global tipping points

Burnt land and smoke from fires in the Amazon rainforest in Rondonia state, Brazil. (Leonardo Carrato/Bloomberg Creative/Getty Images)

From Science Alert



Deforestation in the Amazon is nearing the point of no return, and if this ecosystem falls, it could flip from a vast carbon sink to a gushing carbon tap. Already, some climate scientists suspect the rainforest is spewing more carbon than it's absorbing.

If the Amazon crosses a critical threshold of self-resilience, a new study suggests the disaster could set off a domino effect, knocking over tipping points elsewhere in the world, too, abruptly accelerating environmental crises and causing irreparable damage to the planet.

Tipping points in the global climate system, such as collapsing ice sheets, glacier melt, forest dieback, sea level rise, and shifting monsoons, have received a lot more attention in recent years.

Each one of these switches could seriously turn up the heat on our planet, creating a 'hothouse Earth' with irreversible and catastrophic effects.

They are all connected by the global greenhouse effect, but in a climate crisis, it's uncertain in what order they will ultimately fall.

The most recent study focuses on the Amazon rainforest tipping point and some of its connections to other regional climate systems.

Using historical data from 1979 to 2019, an international team of climate researchers have drawn a link between tree loss in the Amazon and warmer temperatures in Tibet and the West Antarctic ice sheet.

Plugging this data into a model of the global climate system suggested the connection was closely synchronized with modern climate changes.

Periods of higher rainfall in the Amazon correlated with less precipitation in Tibet and West Antarctica.

Since 2008, snow cover on the Tibetan Plateau has been melting at a rapid rate similar to the Arctic.

The Plateau is sometimes known as Earth's third pole, and it plays important roles in global water storage and climate.

If the current study is correct, Tibet's loss of snow cover could be due, in part, to deforestation half a world away. The authors say the region is now operating close to a tipping point that tends to be overlooked.

"Our framework highlights that tipping elements can be linked and also the potential predictability of cascading tipping dynamics," the authors write.

The connection between Antarctica, Tibet, and the Amazon extends nearly 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles), and it appears to be based on strong ocean currents and westerly winds.

In a review of the paper for Nature, climate scientist Valerie Livina from the United Kingdom's National Physical Laboratory agrees that the models show "strong correlations across long distances".

"This is the first time that the theory of complex networks has been applied in the context of tipping points, and the synergy of the two research areas provides an important insight into the global climate dynamics," Livina writes.

"This work opens a new area of tipping point analysis at a global scale."

Nevertheless, there is still a lot of complexity that needs to be incorporated into future models.

Deforestation in the Amazon impacts more than just Tibet and Antarctica. Previous studies suggest the climate of the Amazon, which is closely tuned by its trees, can have impacts on coral reefs in the Caribbean and reduce snowfall in the Sierra Nevada and the Cascade Mountains of North America, potentially triggering extreme drought on the west coast.

The planet's climate systems are intimately connected. It's a small world, after all.

The study was published in Nature Climate Change

The Amazon rainforest is now an emitter of CO2

 From a  tweet by The Economist

The Amazon rainforest’s flora absorb 1.5bn tonnes of CO2 a year, equivalent to 4% of emissions from fossil fuels. The Brazilian Amazon has been a net carbon emitter since 2016. Rapid deforestation outweighs carbon capture by remaining trees

Forests cool the world by at least 0.5 C

 From The Guardian

The world’s forests play a far greater and more complex role in tackling climate crisis than previously thought, due to their physical effects on global and local temperatures, according to new research.

The role of forests as carbon sponges is well established. But comprehensive new data suggests that forests deliver climate benefits well beyond just storing carbon, helping to keep air near and far cool and moist due to the way they physically transform energy and water.

The study, which is the first to pinpoint the non-carbon dioxide benefits of different forests, found that the band of tropical rainforests spanning Latin America, central Africa and south-east Asia generate the most local and global benefits.

Researchers from the US and Colombia found that overall forests keep the planet at least half of a degree Celsius cooler when biophysical effects – from chemical compounds to turbulence and the reflection of light – are combined with carbon dioxide.

In the tropics – from Brazil and Guatemala to Chad, Cameroon and Indonesia – the cooling effect is more than one degree. In short, while all forests provide multiple benefits, some are more important than others in keeping the climate stable.

“Despite the mounting evidence that forests deliver myriad climate benefits, trees are still viewed just as sticks of carbon by many policymakers in the climate change arena,” said Louis Verchot, principal scientist at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and co-author of the study The Unseen Effects of Deforestation: Biophysical Effects on Climate. “Forests are key to mitigation, but also adaptation.”

Deforestation has devastating impacts on biodiversity, food security, and global heating. A recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned about catastrophic consequences humanity faces with rising temperatures.

The findings, published in the journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, suggest that forests are important to mitigation and adaptation, cooling the air and protecting us from droughts, extreme heat and floods caused by the climate breakdown.

Forest cooling is due to a range of biophysical effects such as the physical aspect of the trees’ wood, leaves and density, as opposed to biochemical factors such as the carbon.

Researchers found that forests emit chemicals called biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) which create aerosols that reflect incoming energy and form clouds – both are cooling effects. While they also lead to a buildup of two greenhouse gases – ozone and methane – on balance, the cooling outweighs the warming.

Deep roots, efficient water use and so-called canopy roughness also enable forests to mitigate the impact of extreme heat.

These physical qualities allow trees to move heat and moisture away from the Earth’s surface where we live, which directly cools the local area and influences cloud formation and rainfall – which has ramifications far away.

In the tropics, where forest carbon storage and sequestration rates are highest, the biophysical effects of forests amplify the carbon benefits. In other words, tropical deforestation immediately increases extreme heat locally and decreases regional and local rainfall.

“The biophysical factors don’t cool the planet, but they do change the way we experience heat, and that matters,” said Deborah Lawrence, professor at the University of Virginia and the lead author. “The heart of the tropics is at the heart of the planet and these forests are critical for our survival.”

Better protection, expansion and improved management of the world’s forests are considered by many experts as among the most promising nature-based solutions.

Michael Coe, the tropics program director at the Woodwell Climate Research Center and a study co-author, said: “Without the forest cover we have now, the planet would be hotter and the weather more extreme. Forests provide us defense against the worst-case global warming scenarios.”

Forests, such as this one in Indonesia, do lmore than just store carbon. Photograph: Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock