*[Enwl-eng] Cocoa and crime: what's behind rising forest loss
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No images? Click here  Earth lost 4.1 million hectares from its most pristine rainforests last year – an increase of 10% on 2021. Forest loss is soaring despite pledges by more than 100 world leaders to halt and reverse deforestation by the end of this decade. So what's behind the uptick? You're reading the Imagine newsletter – a weekly synthesis of academic insight on solutions to climate change, brought to you by The Conversation. I'm Jack Marley, energy and environment editor. This week, we're assessing deforestation on a global scale to find out where it's rising – and why. Brazil topped the list for deforestation during 2022, accounting for 43% of all tropical forest lost globally at 1.8 million hectares. This was the final year of Jair Bolsonaro's presidential term, during which a journalist and indigenous expert documenting the destruction of the Amazon were murdered. Tom Pope, a research fellow in political economy at King's College London, explains how Bolsonaro's government allowed extractive industries like logging and mining to act with impunity in the Amazon. "One paper documented how political rhetoric can undermine the legitimacy of Indigenous claims to land. It also showed how the replacement of specialised technical officials in state environmental agencies with non-expert military agents can lead to the delay or obstruction of formal conflict resolution processes over land disputes," he says. "As a result, those with economic interests in the Amazon are more likely to feel emboldened to use violence." Ghana suffered the biggest relative increase in forest loss of any country in 2022. Though absolute figures for deforestation in the west African country are still small, the region produces 70% of the world's cocoa and chocolate makers are reporting booming sales. "Meeting the world’s insatiable appetite for chocolate has wrought a huge environmental cost, as the incredibly rich and diverse rainforests of West Africa are razed to make way for cocoa farms," says Wilma Hart, a postdoctoral research fellow in agriculture and ecology at the University of Queensland. "By generating a new high-resolution map of cocoa growing areas in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, we found the area under cocoa production is truly enormous – and may be associated with up to 37% of forest loss in protected areas." Hart says any solution to rising deforestation in west Africa must involve helping cocoa farmers. Most people growing cocoa do so on a small scale and earn less than US$1 a day, she says. For many, expanding farms into the forest may be the only way to increase their income. "More money from chocolate sales should end up with the farmer. And consumers may also have to pay more for their chocolate," Hart adds. Forests in far north failing too The vast majority (around 97%) of deforestation occurs in the tropics. But research suggests that what is happening to Earth's boreal forests which encircle the Arctic is no less serious. Maxence Martin and Nicole Fenton are ecologists who study Canada's forests at Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue. "Driving along the Trans-Canada Highway, with its endless succession of spruce, aspen, fir and birch trees, it’s easy to assume that our country is bursting with forests," they say. "Although we might see a few logging operations and traces of forest fires here and there, we probably wouldn’t imagine that our forests could someday disappear from the landscape. Yet the reality may be quite different." Martin and Fenton say that Canada is losing its intact forests (areas in which there has been no commercial harvesting) at a rate that's faster than all countries bar Russia and Brazil. "However, it is inaccurate to speak of deforestation in the boreal forests, as the forest grows back after cutting," they say. "What’s happening should actually be called degradation." As in Scandinavia, much of Canada's old-growth forests have been felled and replaced by fast-growing young forests. These offer foresters a source of wood which rapidly renews itself. While tree cover may not change all that much, the difference in carbon storage and biodiversity between old-growth and young, managed forests is stark. "Talking about the low rate of deforestation of Canada’s boreal forests has become a way to avoid addressing the question of the degradation of these forests, which has been widely documented now for decades," Martin and Fenton say. The loss of Russia's boreal forest slowed in 2022 after record destruction in 2021. The researchers behind the report into global forest loss stressed that this was not evidence of a positive trend, however. Because their figures describe tree-cover loss and not necessarily deforestation, it's possible that the improving outlook in 2022 reflected a less severe fire season after heat waves and wildfires destroyed many trees across Siberia during 2020 and 2021. Christopher White, who researches natural hazards at the University of Strathclyde, wrote about the long-term repercussions of Siberian wildfires in 2020: "CO₂ emissions from these fires increased by more than a third compared to 2019, according to scientists at the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service. The wildfires produced an estimated 244 megatons of CO₂ between January and August, releasing thousands of years’ worth of stored carbon." White warned that what was happening in Siberia could amount to a climate "feedback loop". "This is where increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere contribute to further warming by promoting events – like wildfires – which release even more greenhouse gas, creating a self-perpetuating process that accelerates climate change," he said. That's why getting a handle on deforestation is so important for climate change: as both problems escalate, controlling either one becomes increasingly difficult. - Jack Marley, Environment commissioning editor Was this email forwarded to you? Join the 20,000 people who get one email every week about the most important issue of our time. Subscribe to Imagine.  By generating new high-resolution maps, researchers found cocoa plantations were causing far worse forest destruction in West Africa than previously thought.  Armed militias in Brazil hold enormous sway over fate of Amazon – and the global climate Militias mete out violence far from the centres of power – but their dirty work is politically useful.  The future is uncertain for our last old-growth boreal forests The remoteness and small size of old-growth boreal trees should not make us forget their high ecological importance and the many threats they face.  Arctic warming: are record temperatures and fires arriving earlier than scientists predicted? The high temperatures and wildfires of 2019 were thought to have heralded a freak summer for the Arctic. Then 2020 brought worse.  Global supply chains are devouring what’s left of Earth’s unspoilt forests More than 60% of global intact forest loss is unrelated to farming, our research shows.  Rainforests pump water round the tropics – but the pulse of this heart is weakening Calling the Amazon "the lungs of the world" overlooks the forest's vital role in the water cycle. Latest from The Conversation on climate change
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