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The world lost 10 football fields (13 acres, 0.02 square miles) of old-growth tropical forest every minute in 2023 and despite uplifting progress in the Amazon, the picture elsewhere is less rosy, researchers said on Thursday.
High rates of tropical forest loss remain “stubbornly consistent” despite nations pledging in recent years to protect these critical environments, said researchers from the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the University of Maryland.
“Impressive” declines in Brazil and Colombia were “largely counteracted by increases” in tropical forest lost elsewhere, said Mikaela Weisse from WRI, a nonprofit research organization.
“The world took two steps forward, two steps back when it comes to this past year’s forest loss,” said Weisse, director of WRI’s Global Forest Watch, which uses satellite imagery to aid its analysis.
