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How to tackle the global deforestation crisis

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Imagine if France, Germany, and Spain were completely blanketed in forests — and then all those trees were quickly chopped down. That’s nearly the amount of deforestation that occurred globally between 2001 and 2020, with profound consequences.

Deforestation is a major contributor to climate change, producing between 6 and 17 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 2009 study. Meanwhile, because trees also absorb carbon dioxide, removing it from the atmosphere, they help keep the Earth cooler. And climate change aside, forests protect biodiversity.

“Climate change and biodiversity make this a global problem, not a local problem,” says MIT economist Ben Olken. “Deciding to cut down trees or not has huge implications for the world.”

But deforestation is often financially profitable, so it continues at a rapid rate. Researchers can now measure this trend closely: In the last quarter-century, satellite-based technology has led to a paradigm change in charting deforestation. New deforestation datasets, based on the Landsat satellites, for instance, track forest change since 2000 with resolution at 30 meters, while many other products now offer frequent imaging at close resolution.

“Part of this revolution in measurement is accuracy, and the other part is coverage,” says Clare Balboni, an assistant professor of economics at the London School of Economics (LSE). “On-site observation is very expensive and logistically challenging, and you’re talking about case studies. These satellite-based data sets just open up opportunities to see deforestation at scale, systematically, across the globe.”

Balboni and Olken have now helped write a new paper providing a road map for thinking about this crisis. The open-access article, “ The Economics of Tropical Deforestation ,” appears this month in the Annual Review of Economics . The co-authors are Balboni, a former MIT faculty member; Aaron Berman, a PhD candidate in MIT’s Department of Economics; Robin Burgess, an LSE professor; and Olken, MIT’s Jane Berkowitz Carlton and Dennis William Carlton Professor of Microeconomics. Balboni and Olken have also conducted primary research in this area, along with Burgess.

So, how can the world tackle deforestation? It starts with understanding the problem.

Replacing forests with farms

Several decades ago, some thinkers, including the famous MIT economist Paul Samuelson in the 1970s, built models to study forests as a renewable resource; Samuelson calculated the “maximum sustained yield” at which a forest could be cleared while being regrown. These frameworks were designed to think about tree farms or the U.S. national forest system, where a fraction of trees would be cut each year, and then new trees would be grown over time to take their place.

But deforestation today, particularly in tropical areas, often looks very different, and forest regeneration is not common.

Indeed, as Balboni and Olken emphasize, deforestation is now rampant partly because the profits from chopping down trees come not just from timber, but from replacing forests with agriculture. In Brazil, deforestation has increased along with agricultural prices; in Indonesia, clearing trees accelerated as the global price of palm oil went up, leading companies to replace forests with palm tree orchards.

All this tree-clearing creates a familiar situation: The globally shared costs of climate change from deforestation are “externalities,” as economists say, imposed on everyone else by the people removing forest land. It is akin to a company that pollutes into a river, affecting the water quality of residents.

“Economics has changed the way it thinks about this over the last 50 years, and two things are central,” Olken says. “The relevance of global externalities is very important, and the conceptualization of alternate land uses is very important.” This also means traditional forest-management guidance about regrowth is not enough. With the economic dynamics in mind, which policies might work, and why?

The search for solutions

As Balboni and Olken note, economists often recommend “Pigouvian” taxes (named after the British economist Arthur Pigou) in these cases, levied against people imposing externalities on others. And yet, it can be hard to identify who is doing the deforesting.

Instead of taxing people for clearing forests, governments can pay people to keep forests intact. The UN uses Payments for Environmental Services (PES) as part of its REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) program. However, it is similarly tough to identify the optimal landowners to subsidize, and these payments may not match the quick cash-in of deforestation. A 2017 study in Uganda showed PES reduced deforestation somewhat; a 2022 study in Indonesia found no reduction; another 2022 study, in Brazil, showed again that some forest protection resulted.

“There’s mixed evidence from many of these [studies],” Balboni says. These policies, she notes, must reach people who would otherwise clear forests, and a key question is, “How can we assess their success compared to what would have happened anyway?”

Some places have tried cash transfer programs for larger populations. In Indonesia, a 2020 study found such subsidies reduced deforestation near villages by 30 percent. But in Mexico, a similar program meant more people could afford milk and meat, again creating demand for more agriculture and thus leading to more forest-clearing.

At this point, it might seem that laws simply banning deforestation in key areas would work best — indeed, about 16 percent of the world’s land overall is protected in some way. Yet the dynamics of protection are tricky. Even with protected areas in place, there is still “leakage” of deforestation into other regions. 

Still more approaches exist, including “nonstate agreements,” such as the Amazon Soy Moratorium in Brazil, in which grain traders pledged not to buy soy from deforested lands, and reduced deforestation without “leakage.”

Also, intriguingly, a 2008 policy change in the Brazilian Amazon made agricultural credit harder to obtain by requiring recipients to comply with environmental and land registration rules. The result? Deforestation dropped by up to 60 percent over nearly a decade. 

Politics and pulp

Overall, Balboni and Olken observe, beyond “externalities,” two major challenges exist. One, it is often unclear who holds property rights in forests. In these circumstances, deforestation seems to increase. Two, deforestation is subject to political battles.

For instance, as economist Bard Harstad of Stanford University has observed, environmental lobbying is asymmetric. Balboni and Olken write: “The conservationist lobby must pay the government in perpetuity … while the deforestation-oriented lobby need pay only once to deforest in the present.” And political instability leads to more deforestation because “the current administration places lower value on future conservation payments.”

Even so, national political measures can work. In the Amazon from 2001 to 2005, Brazilian deforestation rates were three to four times higher than on similar land across the border, but that imbalance vanished once the country passed conservation measures in 2006. However, deforestation ramped up again after a 2014 change in government. Looking at particular monitoring approaches, a study of Brazil’s satellite-based Real-Time System for Detection of Deforestation (DETER), launched in 2004, suggests that a 50 percent annual increase in its use in municipalities created a 25 percent reduction in deforestation from 2006 to 2016.

How precisely politics matters may depend on the context. In a 2021 paper, Balboni and Olken (with three colleagues) found that deforestation actually decreased around elections in Indonesia. Conversely, in Brazil, one study found that deforestation rates were 8 to 10 percent higher where mayors were running for re-election between 2002 and 2012, suggesting incumbents had deforestation industry support.

“The research there is aiming to understand what the political economy drivers are,” Olken says, “with the idea that if you understand those things, reform in those countries is more likely.”

Looking ahead, Balboni and Olken also suggest that new research estimating the value of intact forest land intact could influence public debates. And while many scholars have studied deforestation in Brazil and Indonesia, fewer have examined the Democratic Republic of Congo, another deforestation leader, and sub-Saharan Africa.

Deforestation is an ongoing crisis. But thanks to satellites and many recent studies, experts know vastly more about the problem than they did a decade or two ago, and with an economics toolkit, can evaluate the incentives and dynamics at play.

“To the extent that there’s ambuiguity across different contexts with different findings, part of the point of our review piece is to draw out common themes — the important considerations in determining which policy levers can [work] in different circumstances,” Balboni says. “That’s a fast-evolving area. We don’t have all the answers, but part of the process is bringing together growing evidence about [everything] that affects how successful those choices can be.”

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September 7, 2021 | Combined Reports - UConn Communications

Study Shows the Impacts of Deforestation and Forest Burning on Biodiversity in the Amazon

Since 2001, between 40,000 and 73,400 square miles of Amazon rainforest have been impacted by fires

Ring of fire: Smoke rises through the understory of a forest in the Amazon region. Plants and animals in the Amazonian rainforest evolved largely without fire, so they lack the adaptations necessary to cope with it. (Credit: Paulo Brando)

A new study, co-authored by a team of researchers including UConn Ecology and Evolutionary Biology researcher Cory Merow provides the first quantitative assessment of how environmental policies on deforestation, along with forest fires and drought, have impacted the diversity of plants and animals in the Amazon. The findings were published in the Sept. 1 issue of Nature .

Researchers used records of more than 14,500 plant and vertebrate species to create biodiversity maps of the Amazon region. Overlaying the maps with historical and current observations of forest fires and deforestation over the last two decades allowed the team to quantify the cumulative impacts on the region’s species.

They found that since 2001, between 40,000 and 73,400 square miles of Amazon rainforest have been impacted by fires, affecting 95% of all Amazonian species and as many as 85% of species that are listed as threatened in this region. While forest management policies enacted in Brazil during the mid-2000s slowed the rate of habitat destruction, relaxed enforcement of these policies coinciding with a change in government in 2019 has seemingly begun to reverse this trend, the authors write. With fires impacting 1,640 to 4,000 square miles of forest, 2019 stands out as one of the most extreme years for biodiversity impacts since 2009, when regulations limiting deforestation were enforced.

“Perhaps most compelling is the role that public pressure played in curbing forest loss in 2019,” Merow says. “When the Brazilian government stopped enforced forest regulations in 2019, each month between January and August 2019 was the worse month on record (e.g. comparing January 2019 to previous January’s) for forest loss in the 20-year history of available data. However, based on international pressure, forest regulation resumed in September 2019, and forest loss declined significantly for the rest of the year, resulting in 2019 looking like an average year compared to the 20-year history.  This was big: active media coverage and public support for policy changes were effective at curbing biodiversity loss on a very rapid time scale.”

The findings are especially critical in light of the fact that at no point in time did the Amazon get a break from those increasing impacts, which would have allowed for some recovery, says senior study author Brian Enquist, a professor in UArizona’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology .

“Even with policies in place, which you can think of as a brake slowing the rate of deforestation, it’s like a car that keeps moving forward, just at a slower speed,” Enquist says. “But in 2019, it’s like the foot was let off the brake, causing it to accelerate again.”

Known mostly for its dense rainforests, the Amazon basin supports around 40% of the world’s remaining tropical forests. It is of global importance as a provider of ecosystem services such as scrubbing and storing carbon from the atmosphere, and it plays a vital role in regulating Earth’s climate. The area also is an enormous reservoir of the planet’s biodiversity, providing habitats for one out of every 10 of the planet’s known species. It has been estimated that in the Amazon, 1,000 tree species can populate an area smaller than a half square mile.

“Fire is not a part of the natural cycle in the rainforest,” says study co-author Crystal N. H. McMichael at the University of Amsterdam. “Native species lack the adaptations that would allow them to cope with it, unlike the forest communities in temperate areas. Repeated burning can cause massive changes in species composition and likely devastating consequences for the entire ecosystem.”

Since the 1960s, the Amazon has lost about 20% of its forest cover to deforestation and fires. While fires and deforestation often go hand in hand, that has not always been the case, Enquist says. As climate change brings more frequent and more severe drought conditions to the region, and fire is often used to clear large areas of rainforest for the agricultural industry, deforestation has spillover effects by increasing the chances of wildfires. Forest loss is predicted reach 21 to 40% by 2050, and such habitat loss will have large impacts on the region’s biodiversity, according to the authors.

“Since the majority of fires in the Amazon are intentionally set by people, preventing them is largely within our control,” says study co-author Patrick Roehrdanz, senior manager of climate change and biodiversity at Conservation International. “One way is to recommit to strong antideforestation policies in Brazil, combined with incentives for a forest economy, and replicate them in other Amazonian countries.”

Policies to protect Amazonian biodiversity should include the formal recognition of Indigenous lands, which encompass more than one-third of the Amazon region, the authors write, pointing to previous research showing that lands owned, used or occupied by Indigenous peoples have less species decline, less pollution and better-managed natural resources.

The authors say their study underscores the dangers of continuing lax policy enforcement. As fires encroach on the heart of the Amazon basin, where biodiversity is greatest, their impacts will have more dire effects, even if the rate of forest burning remains unchanged.

The research was made possible by strategic investment funds allocated by the Arizona Institutes for Resilience at UArizona and the university’s Bridging Biodiversity and Conservation Science group. Additional support came from the National Science Foundation’s Harnessing the Data Revolution program . Data and computation were provided through the Botanical Information and Ecology Network , which is supported by CyVerse , the NSF’s data management platform led by UArizona.

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Drivers of Deforestation

The world loses 5 million hectares of forest to deforestation each year. what activities are driving this, related topics.

Explore palm oil production across the world and its impacts on the environment.

Deforestation and Forest Loss

Explore long-term changes in deforestation and deforestation rates across the world today.

Cutting down forests: what are the drivers of deforestation?

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 over a decade ago, but the world is still losing a similar amount today: using satellite data, researchers at Global Forest Watch estimate that annual global deforestation is around 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 occurred in Brazil and Indonesia. Again, if we look at more recent satellite data , we find that this is still true today: annual deforestation is over 4 million hectares, with Brazil and Indonesia accounting for the majority of it. The expansion of pasture for beef production, croplands for soy and palm oil, and, increasingly, the 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 tropical deforestation.

The expansion of agricultural land in Africa accounted for around 17.5% of tropical 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. 4 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 categorized 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 neighboring 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 the 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. 5 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. 6 , 7

But, as we show on our page 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 neighboring regions. Soybean production has shifted from the Amazon to the Cerrado region south of the Amazonas, often at the expense of forests there. 8 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 that the SoyM be expanded to include not only the Amazon but also regions such as the Cerrado. 6

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. 9 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.

Is our appetite for soy driving deforestation in the Amazon?

Soy has earned itself a bad reputation with many consumers. Its links to deforestation mean that, alongside palm oil, soy has become a product to avoid. Is this reputation justified?

In this article, we will take a look at the story of soy: how production has changed over time, where it is produced, what it is used for, and whether it really has been a key driver of deforestation. Although the research suggests that by far the largest driver of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has been driven by the expansion of pasture land for beef production, soy is likely to have played at least some role in the loss of forest.

More than three-quarters (77%) of global soy is fed to livestock for meat and dairy production. Most of the rest is used for biofuels, industry or vegetable oils. Just 7% of soy is used directly for human food products such as tofu, soy milk, edamame beans, and tempeh. The idea that foods often promoted as substitutes for meat and dairy – such as tofu and soy milk – are driving deforestation is a common misconception.

How has demand for soy changed over time?

Global soy production has exploded over the past 50 years. Global production today is more than 13 times higher than it was in the early 1960s. Even since the year 2000, production has more than doubled.

In the chart here, we see the change in global soybean production from 1961 onwards. 10 Back in the 1960s, we were producing 20 to 30 million tonnes per year. This is now around 350 million tonnes.

We can increase agricultural production in two ways: by improving yields (growing more on a given plot of land) or by expanding the amount of land we use. As we will see later, although countries have seen yield gains over time, much of the increase in production has been driven by the expansion of croplands. Unfortunately, some of this has been at the expense of forests.

Which countries produce the most soy?

Global soy production has increased rapidly over the past 50 years. But to understand whether this has come at a major environmental cost, we also need to understand where this growth has come from.

Which countries are the main producers of soy?

In the map we see the distribution of soybean production across the world. Most of the world’s soy comes from only two countries: the US and Brazil. Combined, they account for more than two-thirds (69%) of global soy production. 11 In fact, they produce almost exactly the same amount: in 2018, the US produced 123 million tonnes, and Brazil 118 million tonnes. Individually, they each account for around one-third of global production. The other major producer is Argentina, which accounts for 11% (at 40 million tonnes).

To understand soy as a potential driver of deforestation, it’s also useful to understand how each country’s production has changed over time. It is the change in production, and how this was achieved (either increased yields or cropland expansion), that is the potential driver of deforestation.

In the other chart we see the change in soy production in Brazil and the US. The US was already producing a lot of soy throughout the 1960s, 70s and 80s and so its growth in recent decades has been much slower than Brazil. The US was growing 20 million tonnes per year as early as 1960. Brazil did not reach this level of output until 1990 – three decades later. This means that its rate of growth in the last 30 years has been much faster.

More than three-quarters of global soy is fed to animals

Before we look at the evidence for whether Brazilian soy is responsible for the clearing of the Amazon, we should first understand what products have been driving this growth.

When someone mentions soy, we often think about foods such as tofu, soy milk, tempeh, or edamame beans. This feeds into the argument that meat and dairy substitutes – such as switching from meat to high-protein tofu or from dairy to soy milk – is in fact worse for the environment. But, only a small percentage of global soy is used for these products. More than three-quarters (77%) of soy is used as feed for livestock.

In the chart, we see the breakdown of what the world’s soy was used for in 2018. On the left, we have total global soy production; in the middle, the three categories of uses (direct human food, animal feed, and industrial processes); and on the right, we have the end-use products. This data is sourced from an analysis published by the University of Oxford’s Food Climate Research Network (FCRN), which relies on the USDA’s PSD database. 12 Over one-third (37%) of global soy is fed to chickens and other poultry, one-fifth to pigs, and 6% to aquaculture. Very little soy is used for beef and dairy production – only 2%.

One-fifth of the world’s soy is used for direct (i.e. not from meat and dairy) human consumption. Most of this is first processed into soybean oil. Typical soy products such as tofu, soy milk, tempeh, and edamame beans account for just 7% of global demand.

Soy can also be used for industrial purposes. Around 4% is used for biofuels, lubricants and other industrial processes. Biodiesel alone accounts for 2.8%.

We might therefore conclude that the increased demand for soy has been driven by a growing appetite for meat, dairy and soybean oil. But to double-check we should look beyond this static single-year view and see how demand has changed over time. Maybe demand for these products has always been high, and instead the growth in demand has come from the increased popularity of products such as soy milk and tofu.

In the chart we see the allocation of soybeans to three categories. Processed products include all animal feed from soybean cake (i.e. 70% of global demand); soybean oil; and industrial products such as biofuels. Direct human food includes all non-animal-sourced foods from soy excluding oils . Direct animal feed is soybeans fed directly to livestock (rather than been processed into soybean cake first).

We see that most of this growth has come from the increased demand for processed soy – animal feed, biofuels, and vegetable oil. This rise has been particularly steep since 1990. By 2013, it had increased from 88 million to 227 million tonnes. Over this period, demand for human food products such as tofu and soy milk increased by only 3 million tonnes (from 7.4 to 10.7 million).

This should not surprise us. Global meat production has more than tripled over the last 50 years. This increase has been most marked for poultry – the largest consumer of soy feed.

Using the ‘change country’ toggle, you can see how this allocation varies by country. For example, we see that this distribution is similar to Brazil's.

Is soy production driving deforestation?

So far we’ve established that demand for soy has increased rapidly over the past 50 years; most soy is produced in the US, Brazil (and to a lesser extent, Argentina); and most of this has been driven by increased demand for animal feed, biofuels and vegetable oils.

The big question is whether this has been a key driver of deforestation.

The first step to answering this is to understand whether the amount of land we use to grow soy has increased. If improvements in crop yields were able to keep up with this rise in production, then we wouldn’t need any additional land, and there would be no need to cut down forests.

In the chart we see the change in soy production, yields, and area harvested. This tells us the percentage change in each of these variables relative to the first year shown. Here the starting year is 1961 but you can change this by adjusting the time slider at the bottom of the chart.

Crop yields have not been able to keep up with production. Since 1961 global yields increased by 150%. But production increased by 1200%. This means the area used to grow soy has more than quadrupled.

This is also true for Brazil [you can see this using the “Change country” toggle]. Since Brazilian soy production was very low in 1961, it makes sense to adjust the time slider to see the change since 1980. Soy yields have doubled since 1980. This is impressive but not enough to keep up with demand: soy production increased by 680%. Instead, Brazil has had to devote more and more land to soy production: land use has tripled since 1980.

Brazil has devoted increasing amounts of land to soy production. But has this come at the expense of forests? Has the Amazon been cleared to make room for it?

This is a question many researchers have tried to answer. What makes it complex is that agricultural and land use systems are intricately linked: it’s possible to assess whether soy production has a direct impact on deforestation, but much harder to understand whether it is indirectly causing harm elsewhere.

In a study published in Science, Alexandra Tyukavina et al. (2017) look at the drivers of forest loss in the Brazilian Legal Amazon. 13 The change in these drivers from 2000 to 2013 is shown in the chart. Note that this overall trend suggests a major decline in forest loss since 2000 – unfortunately, in the years since 2013, rates have increased again.

From this, we would conclude that the dominant driver of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon was the expansion of pasture for beef production. If we look at forest loss from commercial crops – which is mainly soybeans – we see a significant decline, especially following the introduction of ‘Brazil’s Soy Moratorium’. The ‘Soy Moratorium’ was a campaign involving civil agencies and soybean companies, which stipulated that farmers who grew soy on illegal or legal deforestation areas would not be able to sell them to suppliers. Since 2009, satellite imagery has been used to help identify soybean crops being grown on deforested areas. 14

Numerous studies have reached a very similar conclusion: it is pasture, not soybean production, that is driving most of the deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. 15 But, this only looks at the direct drivers of deforestation. In other words, the cutting down of forest today to make space for cropland for soy production.

The indirect impacts of soy production

Soy may no longer be a direct driver of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. But we should also think about the indirect impacts of increased production. We know that the area being used to grow soy is still increasing and that land has to come from somewhere. In particular regions, such as Mato Grosso, studies have found that instead of replacing forest, these croplands are replacing pasture. 16 If this pasture land is simply shifting into forested areas, we could argue that soy is still a major underlying cause of deforestation.

A recent study by researchers Nikolas Kuschnig, Jesús Crespo Cuaresma, and Tamás Krisztin reached this conclusion. 17 They combined high-resolution satellite imagery from the Mato Grosso region in Brazil with socioeconomic panel data to quantify not only the direct impacts of soy production but also the spillover effects. The results suggest that by only looking at direct impacts, we underestimate the role that soy continues to play in deforestation.

It’s also the case that the Amazonas region in Brazil gets most of the attention. But most soy is now grown in other regions of the country. In 2015, only 13% came from the Amazon, while 48% came from the Cerrado region. 18 Some researchers, therefore, make a strong case that interventions such as the ‘Soy Moratorium’ need to be extended to cover regions beyond the Amazon if they are to be effective. Without wider implementation of these policies, we will continue to see deforestation simply shift elsewhere.

Whilst the expansion of pasture for beef production is the leading driver of deforestation in Brazil, soy still plays a significant role when we take its indirect impacts into account. There are a couple of key actions we can take to end deforestation. For consumers, since most deforestation is driven by expanding pastures for beef or soy to feed poultry and pigs, reducing meat consumption is an effective way to make a difference. For companies and regulators, zero-deforestation policies must be more widely implemented (i.e., not only focused on the Amazon) and must be more carefully designed to take spillover effects into account.

There are a number of estimates on what share of deforestation is driven by agriculture. The differences in these estimates are often explained by the different treatments of deforestation versus forest degradation . We cover the differences between these types of forest loss on a related topic page . Agriculture accounts for 70-80% of tropical deforestation – the permanent conversion of forested land to another land use. It accounts for a smaller percentage when degradation – the temporary loss of forest prior to regrowth – is included.

One of the most widely cited studies on this comes from Noriko Hosonuma et al. (2012), who estimates that 73% of tropical deforestation is driven by agriculture. This is similar to estimates by Geist and Lambin (2002), who estimated that around 80% of deforestation in the 1980s and 1990s was driven by agriculture. In fact, over the longer analysis of deforestation from 1840 to 1990, they estimate that 96% of deforestation was driven by agriculture. Gibbs et al. (2010) estimate that during the 1980s and 1990s, 83% of agricultural land expansion replaced forest.

Geist, H. J., & Lambin, E. F. (2002). Proximate Causes and Underlying Driving Forces of Tropical Deforestation . BioScience , 52 (2), 143-150.

Gibbs, H. K., Ruesch, A. S., Achard, F., Clayton, M. K., Holmgren, P., Ramankutty, N., & Foley, J. A. (2010). Tropical forests were the primary sources of new agricultural land in the 1980s and 1990s . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 107 (38), 16732-16737.

Hosonuma, N., Herold, M., De Sy, V., De Fries, R. S., Brockhaus, M., Verchot, L., ... & Romijn, E. (2012). An assessment of deforestation and forest degradation drivers in developing countries . Environmental Research Letters , 7 (4), 044009.

Pendrill, F., Persson, U. M., Godar, J., Kastner, T., Moran, D., Schmidt, S., & Wood, R. (2019). Agricultural and forestry trade drives a large share of tropical deforestation emissions . Global Environmental Change , 56 , 1-10.

The Global Forest Watch program categorizes forest loss drivers based on permanent deforestation – the conversion of forest to another land use – and degradation (which includes logging of tree plantations and wildfires). ‘Commodity-driven deforestation’ – which includes some activities such as mining but is predominantly agricultural commodities – totaled over 4 million hectares in recent years.

A paper by Philip Curtis et al. (2018) discusses this classification in detail. We also look at these categories in more detail in a related article .

Curtis, P. G., Slay, C. M., Harris, N. L., Tyukavina, A., & Hansen, M. C. (2018). Classifying drivers of global forest loss . Science , 361 (6407), 1108-1111.

Since Brazil accounts for 33% of tropical deforestation, and Brazilian cattle account for 24%, cattle account for 72% of Brazil’s total [24 / 33 * 100 = 72%].

Tyukavina, A., Hansen, M. C., Potapov, P. V., Stehman, S. V., Smith-Rodriguez, K., Okpa, C., & Aguilar, R. (2017). Types and rates of forest disturbance in Brazilian Legal Amazon, 2000–2013 . Science Advances , 3 (4), e1601047.

Gibbs, H. K., Rausch, L., Munger, J., Schelly, I., Morton, D. C., Noojipady, P., ... & Walker, N. F. (2015). Brazil's soy moratorium . Science , 347 (6220), 377-378.

Boucher, D., Roquemore, S., & Fitzhugh, E. (2013). Brazil's success in reducing deforestation . Tropical Conservation Science , 6 (3), 426-445.

Kuschnig, N., Crespo Cuaresma, J., & Krisztin, T. (2019). Unveiling Drivers of Deforestation: Evidence from the Brazilian Amazon .

Clark, M. A., Williams, D. R., Buchanan, G. M., Ficetola, G. F., Rondinini, C., & Tilman, D. (2020). Proactive conservation to prevent habitat losses to agricultural expansion . Nature Sustainability .

This data is sourced from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

In 2018, global soy production was 349 million tonnes. The US produced 123 million tonnes [123M / 349M * 100 = 35%], and Brazil produced 118 million tonnes [118M / 349M * 100 = 34%]. Combined, they accounted for 69% of global production.

United States Department of Agriculture. PSD Online. Available at: https://apps.fas.usda.gov/psdonline/app/index.html#/app/advQuery.{/ref }

The majority (77%) of the world’s soy is fed to livestock for meat and dairy production. 7% is fed directly to animals as soybeans, but the remainder is first processed into soybean ‘cake’.{ref}Soybean cake (sometimes referred to as soybean meal) is a high-protein feed made from the pressurization, heat treatment, and extraction processing of soybeans. The oil is extracted from the soybeans to leave a protein-rich product.

Tyukavina, A., Hansen, M. C., Potapov, P. V., Stehman, S. V., Smith-Rodriguez, K., Okpa, C., & Aguilar, R. (2017). Types and rates of forest disturbance in Brazilian Legal Amazon, 2000–2013 . Science Advances , 3(4), e1601047.

Rudorff, B. F. T., Adami, M., Aguiar, D. A., Moreira, M. A., Mello, M. P., Fabiani, L., ... & Pires, B. M. (2011). The soy moratorium in the Amazon biome monitored by remote sensing images . Remote Sensing , 3 (1), 185-202.

Brandão, ASP, de Rezende, GC, Costa Marques, RW, & de Aplicada, IPE (2005). Agricultural growth in the period 1999-2004, explosion of the area planted with soybeans and the environment in Brazil .

Müller, C. (2003). Expansion and modernization of agriculture in the Cerrado–the case of soybeans in Brazil’s center-West. Brasília: Departamento de Economia, Universidade de Brasília .

Barona, E., Ramankutty, N., Hyman, G., & Coomes, O. T. (2010). The role of pasture and soybean in deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon . Environmental Research Letters , 5 (2), 024002.

Kuschnig, Nikolas & Crespo Cuaresma, Jesus & Krisztin, Tamás, 2019. " Unveiling Drivers of Deforestation: Evidence from the Brazilian Amazon ," Ecological Economic Papers 32, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.

Soterroni, A. C., Ramos, F. M., Mosnier, A., Fargione, J., Andrade, P. R., Baumgarten, L., ... & Carvalho, A. X. (2019). Expanding the soy moratorium to Brazil’s Cerrado . Science Advances , 5 (7), eaav7336.

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Study Shows Impacts of Deforestation and Forest Burning on Amazon Biodiversity

Ring of fire: Smoke rises through the understory of a forest in the Amazon region. Plants and animals in the rainforest evolved largely without fire, so they lack the adaptations necessary to cope with it.

Paulo Brando

A new study , co-authored by University of Arizona researchers and published in the Sept. 1 issue of Nature, provides the first quantitative assessment of how environmental policies on deforestation, along with forest fires and drought, have impacted the diversity of plants and animals in the Amazon.

Researchers used records of more than 14,500 plant and vertebrate species to create biodiversity maps of the Amazon region. Overlaying the maps with historical and current observations of forest fires and deforestation over the last two decades allowed the team to quantify the cumulative impacts on the region's species.

They found that since 2001, between 40,000 and 73,400 square miles of Amazon rainforest have been impacted by fires, affecting 95% of all Amazonian species and as many as 85% of species that are listed as threatened in the region. While forest management policies enacted in Brazil during the mid-2000s slowed the rate of habitat destruction, relaxed enforcement of those policies coinciding with a change in government in 2019 has seemingly begun to reverse the trend, the authors write. With fires impacting 1,640 to 4,000 square miles of forest, 2019 stands out as one of the most extreme years for biodiversity impacts since 2009, when regulations limiting deforestation were enforced.

"We show how policy has had a direct and enormous influence on the pace at which biodiversity across the entire Amazon has been affected," said senior study author Brian Enquist , a professor in UArizona Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology . He added that the findings are especially critical in light of the fact that at no point in time did the Amazon get a break from those increasing impacts, which would have allowed for some recovery.

"Even with policies in place, which you can think of as a brake slowing the rate of deforestation, it's like a car that keeps moving forward, just at a slower speed," Enquist said. "But in 2019, it's like the foot was let off the brake, causing it to accelerate again." 

"Assessments based on remote sensing of burned and deforested areas had been done before, but we haven't had a detailed record of what impact those have on the species diversity of the region," said Xiao Feng, the study's first author, who conducted most of the work while he was a postdoctoral researcher at UArizona and is now an assistant professor at Florida State University. "This has been a huge collection of data and an unprecedented informatics effort associated with biodiversity data, and that allowed us to make these interconnections visible."

Flames lick up a tree trunk as fire moves through the rainforest. Since most fires in the Amazon are intentionally set by people, preventing them is largely within the control of regulatory management practices, the authors of the study point out.

Known mostly for its dense rainforests, the Amazon basin supports around 40% of the world's remaining tropical forests. It is of global importance as a provider of ecosystem services such as scrubbing and storing carbon from the atmosphere, and it plays a vital role in regulating Earth's climate. The area also is an enormous reservoir of the planet's biodiversity, providing habitats for one out of every 10 of the planet's known species. It has been estimated that in the Amazon, 1,000 tree species can populate an area smaller than half a square mile.

"This is important in light of the fact that biodiversity goes hand in hand with ecosystem functioning," Enquist said, adding that species with the smallest ranges tend to suffer the most. "Species can become virtually extinct even before they lose their entire range of habitat."

"Fire is not a part of the natural cycle in the rainforest," said study co-author Crystal N. H. McMichael at the University of Amsterdam. "Native species lack the adaptations that would allow them to cope with it, unlike the forest communities in temperate areas. Repeated burning can cause massive changes in species composition and likely devastating consequences for the entire ecosystem."

Since the 1960s, the Amazon has lost about 20% of its forest cover to deforestation and fires. While fires and deforestation often go hand in hand, that has not always been the case, Enquist said. As climate change brings more frequent and more severe drought conditions to the region, and fire is often used to clear large areas of rainforest for the agricultural industry, deforestation has spillover effects by increasing the chances of wildfires. Forest loss is predicted reach 21% to 40% by 2050, and such habitat loss will have large impacts on the region's biodiversity, according to the authors.

"What's nasty about fire in that region is once it starts to encroach on areas that have not been burned, it degrades them irreparably and makes them more susceptible to burning in the future," he said.

"Since the majority of fires in the Amazon are intentionally set by people, preventing them is largely within our control," said study co-author Patrick Roehrdanz, senior manager of climate change and biodiversity at Conservation International. "One way is to recommit to strong anti-deforestation policies in Brazil, combined with incentives for a forest economy, and replicate them in other Amazonian countries."

Vicious cycle: Once fire begins to encroach on areas in the Amazon that have not been burned, it makes them more susceptible to burning in the future.

Policies to protect Amazonian biodiversity should include the formal recognition of Indigenous lands, which are more than one-third of the Amazon region, the authors write, pointing to previous research showing that lands owned, used or occupied by Indigenous peoples have less species decline, less pollution and better-managed natural resources.

The authors say their study underscores the dangers of continuing lax policy enforcement. As fires encroach on the heart of the Amazon basin, where biodiversity is greatest, their impacts will have more dire effects, even if the rate of forest burning remains unchanged.

"We have to remember that it took decades to reduce Amazon deforestation, but it may take just a few years to destroy the conservation policy pillars of conservation," said co-author Paulo Brando, assistant professor in the Department of Earth System Science at the University of California Irvine. "The recent reverse in deforestation and fires trends, and their impacts on Amazon biodiversity, should be a huge cause of concern."

The research was made possible by strategic investment funds allocated by the Arizona Institutes for Resilience at UArizona and the university's Bridging Biodiversity and Conservation Science group. Additional support came from the National Science Foundation's Harnessing the Data Revolution program . Data and computation were provided through the Botanical Information and Ecology Network , which is supported by CyVerse , the NSF's data management platform led by UArizona.

Resources for the Media

Daniel Stolte Science Writer [email protected] 520-626-4402

Brian Enquist Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology [email protected] 520-626-3329

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September 1, 2021

Study shows impacts of deforestation and forest burning on biodiversity in the Amazon

by Daniel Stolte, University of Arizona

A new study, co-authored by University of Arizona researchers and published in the Sept. 1 issue of Nature , provides the first quantitative assessment of how environmental policies on deforestation, along with forest fires and drought, have impacted the diversity of plants and animals in the Amazon.

Researchers used records of more than 14,500 plant and vertebrate species to create biodiversity maps of the Amazon region. Overlaying the maps with historical and current observations of forest fires and deforestation over the last two decades allowed the team to quantify the cumulative impacts on the region's species .

They found that since 2001, between 40,000 and 73,400 square miles of Amazon rainforest have been impacted by fires, affecting 95% of all Amazonian species and as many as 85% of species that are listed as threatened in this region. While forest management policies enacted in Brazil during the mid-2000s slowed the rate of habitat destruction, relaxed enforcement of these policies coinciding with a change in government in 2019 has seemingly begun to reverse this trend, the authors write. With fires impacting 1,640 to 4,000 square miles of forest, 2019 stands out as one of the most extreme years for biodiversity impacts since 2009, when regulations limiting deforestation were enforced.

"We show how policy has had a direct and enormous influence on the pace at which biodiversity across the entire Amazon has been affected," said senior study author Brian Enquist, a professor in UArizona's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. He added that the findings are especially critical in light of the fact that at no point in time did the Amazon get a break from those increasing impacts, which would have allowed for some recovery.

"Even with policies in place, which you can think of as a brake slowing the rate of deforestation, it's like a car that keeps moving forward, just at a slower speed," Enquist said. "But in 2019, it's like the foot was let off the brake, causing it to accelerate again." 

"Assessments based on remote sensing of burned and deforested areas had been done before, but we haven't had a detailed record of what impact those have on the species diversity of the region," said Xiao Feng, the study's first author who conducted most of the work while he was a postdoctoral researcher at UArizona and is now an assistant professor at Florida State University. "This has been a huge collection of data and an unprecedented informatics effort associated with biodiversity data, and that allowed us to make these interconnections visible."

Known mostly for its dense rainforests, the Amazon basin supports around 40% of the world's remaining tropical forests. It is of global importance as a provider of ecosystem services such as scrubbing and storing carbon from the atmosphere, and it plays a vital role in regulating Earth's climate. The area also is an enormous reservoir of the planet's biodiversity, providing habitats for one out of every 10 of the planet's known species. It has been estimated that in the Amazon, 1,000 tree species can populate an area smaller than a half square mile.

"This is important in light of the fact that biodiversity goes hand in hand with ecosystem functioning," Enquist said, adding that species with the smallest ranges tend to suffer the most. "Species can become virtually extinct even before they lose their entire range of habitat."

"Fire is not a part of the natural cycle in the rainforest," said study co-author Crystal N. H. McMichael at the University of Amsterdam. "Native species lack the adaptations that would allow them to cope with it, unlike the forest communities in temperate areas. Repeated burning can cause massive changes in species composition and likely devastating consequences for the entire ecosystem."

Since the 1960s, the Amazon has lost about 20% of its forest cover to deforestation and fires. While fires and deforestation often go hand in hand, that has not always been the case, Enquist said. As climate change brings more frequent and more severe drought conditions to the region, and fire is often used to clear large areas of rainforest for the agricultural industry, deforestation has spillover effects by increasing the chances of wildfires. Forest loss is predicted reach 21 to 40% by 2050, and such habitat loss will have large impacts on the region's biodiversity, according to the authors.

"What's nasty about fire in that region is once it starts to encroach on areas that have not been burned, it degrades them irreparably and makes them more susceptible to burning in the future," he said.

"Since the majority of fires in the Amazon are intentionally set by people, preventing them is largely within our control," said study co-author Patrick Roehrdanz, senior manager of climate change and biodiversity at Conservation International. "One way is to recommit to strong antideforestation policies in Brazil, combined with incentives for a forest economy, and replicate them in other Amazonian countries."

Policies to protect Amazonian biodiversity should include the formal recognition of Indigenous lands, which encompass more than one-third of the Amazon region, the authors write, pointing to previous research showing that lands owned, used or occupied by Indigenous peoples have less species decline, less pollution and better-managed natural resources.

The authors say their study underscores the dangers of continuing lax policy enforcement. As fires encroach on the heart of the Amazon basin, where biodiversity is greatest, their impacts will have more dire effects, even if the rate of forest burning remains unchanged.

"We have to remember that it took decades to reduce Amazon deforestation, but it may take just a few years to destroy the conservation policy pillars of conservation," said co-author Paulo Brando, assistant professor in the Department of Earth System Science at the University of California Irvine. "The recent reverse in deforestation and fires trends, and their impacts on Amazon biodiversity , should be a huge cause of concern."

Journal information: Nature

Provided by University of Arizona

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Deforestation: Case Studies

Deforestation is putting our planet at risk, as the following case studies exemplify. It is responsible for at least 10 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions 1 and wipes out 137 species of plants, animals and insects every day 2 . The deplorable practice degenerates soil, losing half of the world’s topsoil over the past 150 years. 3 Deforestation also leads to drought by reducing the amount of water in the atmosphere. 4

Since the 1950s, deforestation has accelerated significantly, particularly in the tropics. 5 This is primarily due to rapid population growth and a resultant increase in demand for food and resources. 6 Agriculture drives about 80 per cent of deforestation today, as land is cleared for livestock, growing animal feed or other crops. 7 The below deforestation case studies of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest and the Congo Basin provide further insights into modern deforestation. 

Deforestation case study: Brazil

Nearly two-thirds of the Amazon rainforest – the largest rainforest in the world – is within Brazil’s national borders. 8 Any examination of deforestation case studies would be incomplete without considering tree felling in Brazil. 

History of deforestation in Brazil

Humans first discovered the Amazon rainforest about 13,000 years ago. But, it was the arrival of Europeans in the late 15th century that spurred the conversion of the forest into farmland. Nevertheless, the sheer size of the Amazon meant that the rainforest remained largely intact until the early 20th century. It was in the latter half of the 20th century that things began to change. 9

Industrial activities and large-scale agriculture began to eat away the southern and eastern fringes of the Amazon, from the 1950s onwards. 10 Deforestation in Brazil received a significant boost in 1964 when a military dictatorship took power and declared the jungle a security risk. 11 By the 1970s, the government was running television ads encouraging land conversion, provoking millions to migrate north into the forest. 12 Settlements replaced trees, and infrastructure began to develop. Wealthy tycoons subsequently bought the land for cattle ranches or vast fields of soy. 13

By the turn of the 21st century, more than 75 per cent of deforestation in the Amazon was for cattle ranching. But, environmentalists and Indigenous groups drew international attention to the devastation caused and succeeded in curtailing it by 2004. Between 2004 and the early 2010s, annual forest cover loss in Brazil reduced by about 80 per cent. The decline is attributed to “increased law enforcement, satellite monitoring, pressure from environmentalists, private and public sector initiatives, new protected areas, and macroeconomic trends”. 14  

Brazil’s deforestation of the Amazon rainforest since 2010

Unfortunately, however, efforts to curtail deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon have stalled since 2012. 15 Tree felling and land conversion have been trending upwards ever since. The economic incentive for chopping the rainforest down has overcome the environmental benefits of leaving it standing. 16 Political movements and lax government legislation have leveraged this to their advantage. President Jair Bolsonaro won the 2018 election with a promise to open up the Amazon to business. 17 Since his inauguration, the rate of deforestation has leapt by as much as 92 per cent. 18

However, there is still hope for the Amazon rainforest. Bolsonaro’s principal international ally was US President Trump. Now that environmentally-conscious Joe Biden has replaced him in the White House, international pressure regarding deforestation will increase heavily. 19 Biden has made this clear with a promise of USD $20 billion to protect the Amazon. 20

The impact of continued deforestation in Brazil

For its three million plant and animal species and one million Indigenous inhabitants, it is imperative that Amazonian deforestation is massively and immediately reduced. 21 As much as 17 per cent of the Amazon has been lost already. 22 If this proportion increases to over 20 per cent, a tipping point will be reached. 23 This will irreversibly break the water cycle, and at least half of the remaining forest will become savannah. 24

Impact on climate change

Losing the Amazon would also mean losing the fight against climate change. Despite the rampant deforestation in recent years, the remaining Amazon rainforest still absorbs between 5 to 10 per cent of all human CO2 emissions. 25 Cutting trees down increases anthropogenic emissions. When felled, burned or left to rot, trees release sequestered carbon. 26 A combination of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and preserving existing forests is crucial to preventing dangerous levels of global warming. 27  

Deforestation case study: The Congo Basin

The Congo Basin is the second-largest rainforest in the world. 28 It has been described as the ‘second lungs’ of the Earth because of how much carbon dioxide it absorbs and how much oxygen it produces. 29 But, just as the world’s first lungs – the Amazon – is being destroyed by humans, the Congo’s rainforest is also suffering heavy casualties. 30

60 per cent of the Congo Basin is located within the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). 31 The DRC is one of the world’s largest and poorest countries, though it has immense economic resources. 32 Natural resources have fuelled an ongoing war that has affected all the neighbouring countries and claimed as many as six million lives. 33 The resultant instability combined with corruption and poor governance have led to an ever-increasing rate of deforestation within the DRC’s borders. 34

Deforestation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

Compared to the Amazon and Southeast Asia, deforestation in the Congo Basin has been low over the past few decades. 35 Nevertheless, great swathes of primary forest have been lost. Between 2000 and 2014, an area of forest larger than Bangladesh was destroyed. 36 From 2015 until 2019, 6.37 million hectares of tree cover was razed. 37 In 2019 alone, 475,000 hectares of primary forest disappeared, placing the DRC second only to Brazil for total deforestation that year. 38 Should the current rate of deforestation continue, all primary forest in the Congo Basin will be gone by the end of the century. 39

Drivers of deforestation in the DRC’s Congo Basin

Over the past 20 years, the biggest drivers of deforestation in the DRC has been small-scale subsistence agriculture. Clearing trees for charcoal and fuelwood, urban expansion and mining have also contributed to deforestation. Industrial logging is the most common cause of forest degradation. It opens up deeper areas of the forest to commercial hunting. There has been at least a 60 per cent drop in the region’s forest elephant populations over the past decade due to hunting and poaching. 40  

Between 2000 and 2014, small-scale farming contributed to about 90 per cent of the DRC’s deforestation. This trend has not changed in recent years. The majority of small-scale forest clearing is conducted with simple axes by people with no other livelihood options. The region’s political instability and ongoing conflict are therefore inciting the unsustainable rate of deforestation within the Congo Basin. 41

In future, however, industrial logging and land conversion to large-scale agriculture will pose the greatest threats to the Congo rainforest. 42 There are fears that demand for palm oil, rubber and sugar production will promote a massive increase in deforestation. 43 The DRC’s population is also predicted to grow to almost 200 million people by 2050. 44 This increase will threaten the remaining rainforest further, as they try to earn a living in a country deprived of opportunities. 45

The impact of deforestation in the Congo Basin

80 million people depend upon the Congo Basin for their existence. It provides food, charcoal, firewood, medicinal plants, and materials for building and other purposes. But, this rainforest also indirectly supports people across the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. Like all forests, it is instrumental in regulating rainfall, which can affect precipitation hundreds of miles away. The Congo Basin is a primary source of rainfall for the Sahel region, doubling the amount of rainfall in the air that passes over it. 46

The importance of the Congo Basin’s ability to increase precipitation cannot be understated. Areas such as the Horn of Africa are becoming increasingly dry. Drought in Ethiopia and Somalia has put millions of people on emergency food and water rations in recent years. Destroying the DRC’s rainforest would create the largest humanitarian crisis on Earth. 47  

It would also be devastating for biodiversity. The Congo Basin shelters some 10,000 animal species and more than 600 tree species. 48 They play a hugely important role in the forest, which has consequences for the entire planet. For instance, elephants, gorillas, and other large herbivores keep the density of small trees very low through predation. 49 This results in a high density of tall trees in the Congo rainforest. 50 Larger trees store more carbon and therefore help to prevent global warming by removing this greenhouse gas from the atmosphere. 51  

Preserve our forests

Preserving the Amazon and Congo Basin rainforests is vital for tackling climate change, as these deforestation case studies demonstrate. We must prioritise protecting and enhancing our existing trees if we are to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5°C, as recommended by the IPCC. 52

• Rainforest Alliance. (2018). What is the Relationship Between Deforestation And Climate Change? [online] Available at: https://www.rainforest-alliance.org/articles/relationship-between-deforestation-climate-change.
• www.worldanimalfoundation.com. (n.d.). Deforestation: Clearing The Path For Wildlife Extinctions. [online] Available at: https://www.worldanimalfoundation.com/advocate/wild-earth/params/post/1278141/deforestation-clearing-the-path-for-wildlife-extinctions#:~:text=Seventy%20percent%20of%20the%20Earth.
• World Wildlife Fund. (2000). Soil Erosion and Degradation | Threats | WWF. [online] Available at: https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/soil-erosion-and-degradation.
• Butler, R.A. (2001). The impact of deforestation. [online] Mongabay. Available at: https://rainforests.mongabay.com/09-consequences-of-deforestation.html.
• The Classroom | Empowering Students in Their College Journey. (2009). The History of Deforestation. [online] Available at: https://www.theclassroom.com/the-history-of-deforestation-13636286.html.
• Greenpeace USA. (n.d.). Agribusiness & Deforestation. [online] Available at: https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/forests/issues/agribusiness/.
• Yale.edu. (2015). The Amazon Basin Forest | Global Forest Atlas. [online] Available at: https://globalforestatlas.yale.edu/region/amazon.
• Time. (2019). The Amazon Rain Forest Is Nearly Gone. We Went to the Front Lines to See If It Could Be Saved. [online] Available at: https://time.com/amazon-rainforest-disappearing/.
• Butler, R. (2020). Amazon Destruction. [online] Mongabay.com. Available at: https://rainforests.mongabay.com/amazon/amazon_destruction.html.
• the Guardian. (2020). Amazon deforestation surges to 12-year high under Bolsonaro. [online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/01/amazon-deforestation-surges-to-12-year-high-under-bolsonaro.
• Earth Innovation Institute. (2020). Joe Biden offers $20 billion to protect Amazon forests. [online] Available at: https://earthinnovation.org/2020/03/joe-biden-offers-20-billion-to-protect-amazon-forests/.
• Brazil’s Amazon: Deforestation “surges to 12-year high.” (2020). BBC News. [online] 30 Nov. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-55130304.
• Carbon Brief. (2020). Guest post: Could climate change and deforestation spark Amazon “dieback”? [online] Available at: https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-could-climate-change-and-deforestation-spark-amazon-dieback.
• Union of Concerned Scientists (2012). Tropical Deforestation and Global Warming | Union of Concerned Scientists. [online] www.ucsusa.org. Available at: https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/tropical-deforestation-and-global-warming#:~:text=When%20trees%20are%20cut%20down.
• Milman, O. (2018). Scientists say halting deforestation “just as urgent” as reducing emissions. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/04/climate-change-deforestation-global-warming-report.
• Bergen, M. (2019). Congo Basin Deforestation Threatens Food and Water Supplies Throughout Africa. [online] World Resources Institute. Available at: https://www.wri.org/blog/2019/07/congo-basin-deforestation-threatens-food-and-water-supplies-throughout-africa.
• www.esa.int. (n.d.). Earth from Space: “Second lungs of the Earth.” [online] Available at: https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Earth_from_Space_Second_lungs_of_the_Earth [Accessed 26 Feb. 2021].
• Erickson-Davis, M. (2018). Congo Basin rainforest may be gone by 2100, study finds. [online] Mongabay Environmental News. Available at: https://news.mongabay.com/2018/11/congo-basin-rainforest-may-be-gone-by-2100-study-finds/.
• Mongabay Environmental News. (2020). Poor governance fuels “horrible dynamic” of deforestation in DRC. [online] Available at: https://news.mongabay.com/2020/12/poor-governance-fuels-horrible-dynamic-of-deforestation-in-drc/ [Accessed 26 Feb. 2021].
• DR Congo country profile. (2019). BBC News. [online] 10 Jan. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13283212.
• Butler, R.A. (2001). Congo Deforestation. [online] Mongabay. Available at: https://rainforests.mongabay.com/congo/deforestation.html.
• Mongabay Environmental News. (2020). Poor governance fuels “horrible dynamic” of deforestation in DRC. [online] Available at: https://news.mongabay.com/2020/12/poor-governance-fuels-horrible-dynamic-of-deforestation-in-drc/.
• Butler, R. (2020). The Congo Rainforest. [online] Mongabay.com. Available at: https://rainforests.mongabay.com/congo/.
• Editor, B.W., Environment (n.d.). Large trees are carbon-storing giants. www.thetimes.co.uk. [online] Available at: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/large-trees-are-more-valuable-carbon-stores-than-was-thought-k8hnggzs8#:~:text=The%20world [Accessed 26 Feb. 2021].
• IPCC (2018). Summary for Policymakers — Global Warming of 1.5 oC. [online] Ipcc.ch. Available at: https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/.

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Home / News / Science & Technology / Study shows the impact of deforestation and forest burning on biodiversity in the Amazon

Study shows the impact of deforestation and forest burning on biodiversity in the Amazon

A new study authored by researchers from Florida State University and the University of Arizona is offering the first quantitative assessment of how lax deforestation policies, drought and forest fires have impacted biodiversity in the Amazon River basin. 

FSU Assistant Professor of Geography Xiao Feng worked on the study published today in Nature while at the University of Arizona. Feng said the amount of data used in the study is unparalleled. 

“This has been a huge collection of data and an unprecedented informatics effort associated with biodiversity data, and that allowed us to make these interconnections visible,” Feng said. 

The study used records of more than 14,500 plant and vertebrate species to create biodiversity maps of the Amazon basin, a region about eight times the size of Texas. Overlaying the maps with historical and current observations of forest fires and deforestation over the past two decades allowed the team to quantify the cumulative impacts on the region’s species. 

Researchers found that, since 2001, between 40,000 and 73,400 square miles of Amazon rainforest have been impacted by fires. Those fires have affected 95% of all Amazonian species and as many as 85% of the region’s species that have been identified as threatened.

Brian Enquist, professor at the University of Arizona’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, said that biodiversity and a healthy ecosystem go hand in hand. 

Enquist, the study’s senior author, said that deforestation policies have fueled increasing rates of deforestation that have deprived the Amazon of valuable time to recover. 

Regulations enacted in Brazil in the mid-2000s slowed forest destruction, but a change in government in 2019 coincided with loosening policies that reversed this trend. In 2019, fires impacted between 1,640 to 4,000 square miles of forest, making it one of the most extreme years for biodiversity impact since deforestation limits were enforced in 2009. 

“Policy has had a direct and enormous influence on the pace at which biodiversity across the entire Amazon has been affected,” Enquist said. “Even with policies in place, which you can think of as a brake slowing the rate of deforestation, it’s like a car that keeps moving forward, just at a slower speed. But in 2019, it’s like the foot was let off the brake, causing it to accelerate again.”

The Amazon basin supports around 40% of the world’s remaining tropical forests and plays a crucial role in regulating Earth’s climate via crucial ecosystem services such as scrubbing and storing carbon from the atmosphere.   

The area is a reservoir of the planet’s biodiversity, providing habitats for one out of every 10 of the planet’s known species. Scientists have estimated that in the Amazon, 1,000 tree species can populate an area smaller than a half square mile. 

The research was made possible by strategic investment funds allocated by the Arizona Institutes for Resilience at UArizona and the university’s Bridging Biodiversity and Conservation Science group. Additional support came from the National Science Foundation’s Harnessing the Data Revolution program . Data and computation were provided through the Botanical Information and Ecology Network , which is supported by CyVerse , the NSF’s data management platform led by UArizona.

This release was published in cooperation with the Office of University Communications at the University of Arizona .

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Cows graze along a rural mountain road in Tepetiltic, Nayarit in Mexico. (Image credit: Getty Images)

The diversity of life has plummeted over the past 30 years in more than a dozen tropical forest reserves in Mexico, a new study shows.

Even these highly protected areas are seeing the array of plant and animal life follow a now global trend in which a few groups thrive and proliferate in human-altered landscapes where most groups decline.

“We had an idea that this was happening globally. The surprising thing is the omnipresence of this phenomenon of winners and losers in tropical areas,” said senior study author Rodolfo Dirzo , a professor of biology in the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences , and of Earth system science in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability . “This is critical because tropical rainforests are the most important stores of biological richness on the planet.”

The research is based on surveys of more than 60 tropical ecologists who, like Dirzo, have spent decades studying reserves in central Mexico. The 14 studied reserves, which are part of a biodiversity hotspot that spans across Mesoamerica, have each been designated under a UNESCO program aimed at establishing a scientific basis for improving human livelihoods and safeguarding ecosystems.

In and around many of the protected areas, the authors found that new roads continued to go up and trees came down between 1990 and 2020 as people cleared forest for timber or cattle grazing. The abundance of long-lived, shade-tolerant tree species – the kind that make old-growth forests some of our planet’s largest carbon sinks – declined on average across all reserves by more than 25%.

“What is left is just small pieces of forest, and then a lot of disturbances around them,” said lead study author Daniel Auliz-Ortiz, who worked on the research as part of his doctoral thesis at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Morelia, Mexico.

According to the study, published Jan. 22 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , the fragmented and depleted habitats that remain do not sustain populations of primates, many butterflies, raptors, reptiles, amphibians, and apex predators like jaguars in the numbers they once did. In their place, small, rapidly reproducing animals like rats and mice and weedy, light-loving vines have flourished.

A global challenge

The changes unfolding in central Mexico’s tropical forest reserves illustrate a reality of protected areas around the world: Deforestation is rarely eliminated entirely, with major negative consequences for ecosystems and humans.

Small rodents carry many infectious diseases that can spread and prove dangerous to people. As prolific seedeaters, they can also change where and how various plants become established in an ecosystem, added Dirzo, who is a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Bing Professor in Environmental Science. “We are positioning them to be the winners in these ecosystems,” he said.

Also among the winners are fast-growing, pioneering plants that need abundant light and can take advantage of disturbed or clear-cut landscapes, but which store much less carbon than the shade-tolerant tree species they are replacing. This replacement “can significantly limit global carbon storage,” the authors write.

“We had an idea that this was happening globally. The surprising thing is the omnipresence of this phenomenon of winners and losers in tropical areas.” —Rodolfo Dirzo Professor of Earth System Science in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and Professor of Biology in the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences

Expanding opportunities

To prevent further deforestation, the researchers call for expanding opportunities for people to earn a living around protected areas by means other than cattle ranching. They found that forest loss rates were lower and human welfare was higher in regions where economies revolve around alternatives such as eco-friendly tourism, public programs that pay local communities for the environmental services provided by intact forests, or cultivation of multiple crops like coffee and cacao under the shade of a forest canopy.

In the absence of these opportunities, the researchers found local communities often turn to intensive cattle ranching or monoculture farming – and are forced to cultivate more and more land to remain profitable.

“Protection is not a panacea,” said Dirzo. “We need to make sure that the areas we have set aside are not just reserves on paper, but that they’re effectively safeguarding biodiversity within landscapes where the livelihoods of local peoples are also meaningfully supported.”

Lead study author Daniel Martín Auliz-Ortiz is affiliated with Instituto de Investigaciones en Ecosistemas y Sustenabilidad, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Additional co-authors are affiliated with UNAM, Universidad de Ciencias y Artes de Chiapas, Secretaría de Medio Ambiente e Historia Natural, Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, Universidad Autónoma del Estado del Morelos, Faktorgruen, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Unidad Lerma, Mexico Federal Electricity Commission’s Pre-Planning Center of the Gulf, Universidad Veracruzana, Instituto de Ecología, A.C., Instituto tecnológico de Ciudad Victoria, Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas in Autlán de Navarro, Universidad de Guadalajara, Regenerando Nuestro Entorno Asociación Civil, Centro de Intervenciones Asistidas con Equinos y Formación para el Bienestar y Sustenabilidad, Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez, Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas, Secretaría de Medio Ambiente e Historia natural, KiekariTerra A.C., Comisión de Parqes y Biodiversidad de Tamaulipas, Instituto Tecnológico de Conkal, Bishop’s University, and Universidad Autónoma de Campeche.

This research was supported by Posgrado en Ciencias Biológicas of UNAM and CONACyT. The authors used ChatGPT 3.5 to support language review and writing.

Media Contacts

Rodolfo Dirzo, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences: [email protected]

Josie Garthwaite, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability: (650) 497-0947, [email protected]

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Case Study: The Amazon Rainforest

The Amazon in context

Tropical rainforests are often considered to be the “cradles of biodiversity.” Though they cover only about 6% of the Earth’s land surface, they are home to over 50% of global biodiversity. Rainforests also take in massive amounts of carbon dioxide and release oxygen through photosynthesis, which has also given them the nickname “lungs of the planet.” They also store very large amounts of carbon, and so cutting and burning their biomass contributes to global climate change. Many modern medicines are derived from rainforest plants, and several very important food crops originated in the rainforest, including bananas, mangos, chocolate, coffee, and sugar cane.

In order to qualify as a tropical rainforest, an area must receive over 250 centimeters of rainfall each year and have an average temperature above 24 degrees centigrade, as well as never experience frosts. The Amazon rainforest in South America is the largest in the world. The second largest is the Congo in central Africa, and other important rainforests can be found in Central America, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia. Brazil contains about 40% of the world’s remaining tropical rainforest. Its rainforest covers an area of land about 2/3 the size of the continental United States.

There are countless reasons, both anthropocentric and ecocentric, to value rainforests. But they are one of the most threatened types of ecosystems in the world today. It’s somewhat difficult to estimate how quickly rainforests are being cut down, but estimates range from between 50,000 and 170,000 square kilometers per year. Even the most conservative estimates project that if we keep cutting down rainforests as we are today, within about 100 years there will be none left.

How does a rainforest work?

Rainforests are incredibly complex ecosystems, but understanding a few basics about their ecology will help us understand why clear-cutting and fragmentation are such destructive activities for rainforest biodiversity.

High biodiversity in tropical rainforests means that the interrelationships between organisms are very complex. A single tree may house more than 40 different ant species, each of which has a different ecological function and may alter the habitat in distinct and important ways. Ecologists debate about whether systems that have high biodiversity are stable and resilient, like a spider web composed of many strong individual strands, or fragile, like a house of cards. Both metaphors are likely appropriate in some cases. One thing we can be certain of is that it is very difficult in a rainforest system, as in most other ecosystems, to affect just one type of organism. Also, clear cutting one small area may damage hundreds or thousands of established species interactions that reach beyond the cleared area.

Pollination is a challenge for rainforest trees because there are so many different species, unlike forests in the temperate regions that are often dominated by less than a dozen tree species. One solution is for individual trees to grow close together, making pollination simpler, but this can make that species vulnerable to extinction if the one area where it lives is clear cut. Another strategy is to develop a mutualistic relationship with a long-distance pollinator, like a specific bee or hummingbird species. These pollinators develop mental maps of where each tree of a particular species is located and then travel between them on a sort of “trap-line” that allows trees to pollinate each other. One problem is that if a forest is fragmented then these trap-line connections can be disrupted, and so trees can fail to be pollinated and reproduce even if they haven’t been cut.

The quality of rainforest soils is perhaps the most surprising aspect of their ecology. We might expect a lush rainforest to grow from incredibly rich, fertile soils, but actually, the opposite is true. While some rainforest soils that are derived from volcanic ash or from river deposits can be quite fertile, generally rainforest soils are very poor in nutrients and organic matter. Rainforests hold most of their nutrients in their live vegetation, not in the soil. Their soils do not maintain nutrients very well either, which means that existing nutrients quickly “leech” out, being carried away by water as it percolates through the soil. Also, soils in rainforests tend to be acidic, which means that it’s difficult for plants to access even the few existing nutrients. The section on slash and burn agriculture in the previous module describes some of the challenges that farmers face when they attempt to grow crops on tropical rainforest soils, but perhaps the most important lesson is that once a rainforest is cut down and cleared away, very little fertility is left to help a forest regrow.

What is driving deforestation in the Amazon?

Many factors contribute to tropical deforestation, but consider this typical set of circumstances and processes that result in rapid and unsustainable rates of deforestation. This story fits well with the historical experience of Brazil and other countries with territory in the Amazon Basin.

Population growth and poverty encourage poor farmers to clear new areas of rainforest, and their efforts are further exacerbated by government policies that permit landless peasants to establish legal title to land that they have cleared.

At the same time, international lending institutions like the World Bank provide money to the national government for large-scale projects like mining, construction of dams, new roads, and other infrastructure that directly reduces the forest or makes it easier for farmers to access new areas to clear.

The activities most often encouraging new road development are timber harvesting and mining. Loggers cut out the best timber for domestic use or export, and in the process knock over many other less valuable trees. Those trees are eventually cleared and used for wood pulp, or burned, and the area is converted into cattle pastures. After a few years, the vegetation is sufficiently degraded to make it not profitable to raise cattle, and the land is sold to poor farmers seeking out a subsistence living.

Regardless of how poor farmers get their land, they often are only able to gain a few years of decent crop yields before the poor quality of the soil overwhelms their efforts, and then they are forced to move on to another plot of land. Small-scale farmers also hunt for meat in the remaining fragmented forest areas, which reduces the biodiversity in those areas as well.

Another important factor not mentioned in the scenario above is the clearing of rainforest for industrial agriculture plantations of bananas, pineapples, and sugar cane. These crops are primarily grown for export, and so an additional driver to consider is consumer demand for these crops in countries like the United States.

These cycles of land use, which are driven by poverty and population growth as well as government policies, have led to the rapid loss of tropical rainforests. What is lost in many cases is not simply biodiversity, but also valuable renewable resources that could sustain many generations of humans to come. Efforts to protect rainforests and other areas of high biodiversity is the topic of the next section.

How to tackle the global deforestation crisis

Imagine if France, Germany, and Spain were completely blanketed in forests — and then all those trees were quickly chopped down. That’s nearly the amount of deforestation that occurred globally between 2001 and 2020, with profound consequences.

Deforestation is a major contributor to climate change, producing between 6 and 17 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 2009 study. Meanwhile, because trees also absorb carbon dioxide, removing it from the atmosphere, they help keep the Earth cooler. And climate change aside, forests protect biodiversity.

“Climate change and biodiversity make this a global problem, not a local problem,” says MIT economist Ben Olken. “Deciding to cut down trees or not has huge implications for the world.”

But deforestation is often financially profitable, so it continues at a rapid rate. Researchers can now measure this trend closely: In the last quarter-century, satellite-based technology has led to a paradigm change in charting deforestation. New deforestation datasets, based on the Landsat satellites, for instance, track forest change since 2000 with resolution at 30 meters, while many other products now offer frequent imaging at close resolution.

“Part of this revolution in measurement is accuracy, and the other part is coverage,” says Clare Balboni, an assistant professor of economics at the London School of Economics (LSE). “On-site observation is very expensive and logistically challenging, and you’re talking about case studies. These satellite-based data sets just open up opportunities to see deforestation at scale, systematically, across the globe.”

Balboni and Olken have now helped write a new paper providing a road map for thinking about this crisis. The open-access article, “ The Economics of Tropical Deforestation ,” appears this month in the Annual Review of Economics . The co-authors are Balboni, a former MIT faculty member; Aaron Berman, a PhD candidate in MIT’s Department of Economics; Robin Burgess, an LSE professor; and Olken, MIT’s Jane Berkowitz Carlton and Dennis William Carlton Professor of Microeconomics. Balboni and Olken have also conducted primary research in this area, along with Burgess.

So, how can the world tackle deforestation? It starts with understanding the problem.

Replacing forests with farms

Several decades ago, some thinkers, including the famous MIT economist Paul Samuelson in the 1970s, built models to study forests as a renewable resource; Samuelson calculated the “maximum sustained yield” at which a forest could be cleared while being regrown. These frameworks were designed to think about tree farms or the U.S. national forest system, where a fraction of trees would be cut each year, and then new trees would be grown over time to take their place.

But deforestation today, particularly in tropical areas, often looks very different, and forest regeneration is not common.

Indeed, as Balboni and Olken emphasize, deforestation is now rampant partly because the profits from chopping down trees come not just from timber, but from replacing forests with agriculture. In Brazil, deforestation has increased along with agricultural prices; in Indonesia, clearing trees accelerated as the global price of palm oil went up, leading companies to replace forests with palm tree orchards.

All this tree-clearing creates a familiar situation: The globally shared costs of climate change from deforestation are “externalities,” as economists say, imposed on everyone else by the people removing forest land. It is akin to a company that pollutes into a river, affecting the water quality of residents.

“Economics has changed the way it thinks about this over the last 50 years, and two things are central,” Olken says. “The relevance of global externalities is very important, and the conceptualization of alternate land uses is very important.” This also means traditional forest-management guidance about regrowth is not enough. With the economic dynamics in mind, which policies might work, and why?

The search for solutions

As Balboni and Olken note, economists often recommend “Pigouvian” taxes (named after the British economist Arthur Pigou) in these cases, levied against people imposing externalities on others. And yet, it can be hard to identify who is doing the deforesting.

Instead of taxing people for clearing forests, governments can pay people to keep forests intact. The UN uses Payments for Environmental Services (PES) as part of its REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) program. However, it is similarly tough to identify the optimal landowners to subsidize, and these payments may not match the quick cash-in of deforestation. A 2017 study in Uganda showed PES reduced deforestation somewhat; a 2022 study in Indonesia found no reduction; another 2022 study, in Brazil, showed again that some forest protection resulted.

“There’s mixed evidence from many of these [studies],” Balboni says. These policies, she notes, must reach people who would otherwise clear forests, and a key question is, “How can we assess their success compared to what would have happened anyway?”

Some places have tried cash transfer programs for larger populations. In Indonesia, a 2020 study found such subsidies reduced deforestation near villages by 30 percent. But in Mexico, a similar program meant more people could afford milk and meat, again creating demand for more agriculture and thus leading to more forest-clearing.

At this point, it might seem that laws simply banning deforestation in key areas would work best — indeed, about 16 percent of the world’s land overall is protected in some way. Yet the dynamics of protection are tricky. Even with protected areas in place, there is still “leakage” of deforestation into other regions. 

Still more approaches exist, including “nonstate agreements,” such as the Amazon Soy Moratorium in Brazil, in which grain traders pledged not to buy soy from deforested lands, and reduced deforestation without “leakage.”

Also, intriguingly, a 2008 policy change in the Brazilian Amazon made agricultural credit harder to obtain by requiring recipients to comply with environmental and land registration rules. The result? Deforestation dropped by up to 60 percent over nearly a decade. 

Politics and pulp

Overall, Balboni and Olken observe, beyond “externalities,” two major challenges exist. One, it is often unclear who holds property rights in forests. In these circumstances, deforestation seems to increase. Two, deforestation is subject to political battles.

For instance, as economist Bard Harstad of Stanford University has observed, environmental lobbying is asymmetric. Balboni and Olken write: “The conservationist lobby must pay the government in perpetuity … while the deforestation-oriented lobby need pay only once to deforest in the present.” And political instability leads to more deforestation because “the current administration places lower value on future conservation payments.”

Even so, national political measures can work. In the Amazon from 2001 to 2005, Brazilian deforestation rates were three to four times higher than on similar land across the border, but that imbalance vanished once the country passed conservation measures in 2006. However, deforestation ramped up again after a 2014 change in government. Looking at particular monitoring approaches, a study of Brazil’s satellite-based Real-Time System for Detection of Deforestation (DETER), launched in 2004, suggests that a 50 percent annual increase in its use in municipalities created a 25 percent reduction in deforestation from 2006 to 2016.

How precisely politics matters may depend on the context. In a 2021 paper, Balboni and Olken (with three colleagues) found that deforestation actually decreased around elections in Indonesia. Conversely, in Brazil, one study found that deforestation rates were 8 to 10 percent higher where mayors were running for re-election between 2002 and 2012, suggesting incumbents had deforestation industry support.

“The research there is aiming to understand what the political economy drivers are,” Olken says, “with the idea that if you understand those things, reform in those countries is more likely.”

Looking ahead, Balboni and Olken also suggest that new research estimating the value of intact forest land intact could influence public debates. And while many scholars have studied deforestation in Brazil and Indonesia, fewer have examined the Democratic Republic of Congo, another deforestation leader, and sub-Saharan Africa.

Deforestation is an ongoing crisis. But thanks to satellites and many recent studies, experts know vastly more about the problem than they did a decade or two ago, and with an economics toolkit, can evaluate the incentives and dynamics at play.

“To the extent that there’s ambuiguity across different contexts with different findings, part of the point of our review piece is to draw out common themes — the important considerations in determining which policy levers can [work] in different circumstances,” Balboni says. “That’s a fast-evolving area. We don’t have all the answers, but part of the process is bringing together growing evidence about [everything] that affects how successful those choices can be.”

ENCYCLOPEDIC ENTRY

Deforestation.

Deforestation is the intentional clearing of forested land.

Biology, Ecology, Conservation

Trees are cut down for timber, waiting to be transported and sold.

Photograph by Esemelwe

Deforestation is the purposeful clearing of forested land. Throughout history and into modern times, forests have been razed to make space for agriculture and animal grazing, and to obtain wood for fuel, manufacturing, and construction.

Deforestation has greatly altered landscapes around the world. About 2,000 years ago, 80 percent of Western Europe was forested; today the figure is 34 percent. In North America, about half of the forests in the eastern part of the continent were cut down from the 1600s to the 1870s for timber and agriculture. China has lost great expanses of its forests over the past 4,000 years and now just over 20 percent of it is forested. Much of Earth’s farmland was once forests.

Today, the greatest amount of deforestation is occurring in tropical rainforests, aided by extensive road construction into regions that were once almost inaccessible. Building or upgrading roads into forests makes them more accessible for exploitation. Slash-and-burn agriculture is a big contributor to deforestation in the tropics. With this agricultural method, farmers burn large swaths of forest, allowing the ash to fertilize the land for crops. The land is only fertile for a few years, however, after which the farmers move on to repeat the process elsewhere. Tropical forests are also cleared to make way for logging, cattle ranching, and oil palm and rubber tree plantations.

Deforestation can result in more carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere. That is because trees take in carbon dioxide from the air for photosynthesis , and carbon is locked chemically in their wood. When trees are burned, this carbon returns to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide . With fewer trees around to take in the carbon dioxide , this greenhouse gas accumulates in the atmosphere and accelerates global warming.

Deforestation also threatens the world’s biodiversity . Tropical forests are home to great numbers of animal and plant species. When forests are logged or burned, it can drive many of those species into extinction. Some scientists say we are already in the midst of a mass-extinction episode.

More immediately, the loss of trees from a forest can leave soil more prone to erosion . This causes the remaining plants to become more vulnerable to fire as the forest shifts from being a closed, moist environment to an open, dry one.

While deforestation can be permanent, this is not always the case. In North America, for example, forests in many areas are returning thanks to conservation efforts.

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• Published: 04 January 2021

The impact of near-real-time deforestation alerts across the tropics

• Fanny Moffette   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5878-7924 1 , 2 ,
• Jennifer Alix-Garcia 3 ,
• Katherine Shea 4 &
• Amy H. Pickens 5  

Nature Climate Change volume  11 ,  pages 172–178 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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Reducing deforestation to mitigate climate change necessitates monitoring of deforestation activity. However, while freely available deforestation alerts on forest loss are available, the effect of these alerts and the presence of subscribers in a particular area is unclear. Here, we show that subscriptions to alerts in 22 tropical countries decrease the probability of deforestation in Africa by 18% relative to the average 2011–2016 levels. There is no effect on other continents, and the availability of alerts does not significantly change deforestation outcomes. This decrease in Africa is higher in protected areas and concessions, suggesting that alerts either increased capacity to enforce existing deforestation policy or induced the development of more effective anti-deforestation policies. Calculated using the social cost of carbon for avoided deforestation in Africa, we estimate the alert system’s value to be between US$149 million and US$696 million.

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Acknowledgements

We thank S. Jamilla, E. Goldman and I. Collins for creating the database. We thank K. Chomitz, T. Coger, J. Engelmann, N. Harris, H. Nembhard, F. Stolle and N. Ullery and participants at the Environmental and Resources Seminar of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and at the Applied Economics Seminar at Oregon State University for comments. We acknowledge funding from the World Resources Institute; the organization had no input into the study design nor impact on the presentation of the results.

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Fanny Moffette

Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA

Department of Applied Economics, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA

Jennifer Alix-Garcia

Forests Team, World Resources Institute, Washington, DC, USA

Katherine Shea

Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

Amy H. Pickens

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F.M. and J.A.-G designed research, performed econometric analyses and led the writing. K.S. managed the data compilation and contributed to the writing. A.H.P contributed to the database.

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Supplement A GLAD availability (including summary statistics, supplementary estimation results, Tables A1–A11 and Figs. A1 and A2), Supplement B Subscriptions (including description of subscription classification, supplementary estimation results, and Tables B1–B22 and Figs. B1–B3) and Supplement C Review of other alert systems.

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Moffette, F., Alix-Garcia, J., Shea, K. et al. The impact of near-real-time deforestation alerts across the tropics. Nat. Clim. Chang. 11 , 172–178 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-00956-w

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A new study that measures the impact of deforestation in New England comes to a conclusion familiar to environmentalists: Forest conservation is a key strategy in addressing climate change.

Deforestation impacts carbon pollution in two ways. Trees soak up carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, from the atmosphere, and their disappearance erases that benefit. Then, the act of clearing trees releases some of that stored carbon back into the atmosphere. 

Scientists widely agree that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere must remain below 350 parts per million to avoid catastrophic climate change, but in 2021, atmospheric carbon dioxide increased to 420 parts per million, the study released Tuesday says. 

Compiled by scientists from Massachusetts-based Clark University and global environmental organization The Nature Conservancy, the report estimates potential emissions that would result from transitioning todays’ forests to developed, agricultural or other non-forested land. It also estimates the actual emissions that resulted from forest clearing in the 1900s and 2000s in all six of New England’s states and New York.  

Finally, the study accounts for the lost carbon sequestration during the 1990s and 2000s, as well as the “potential foregone” sequestration that could take place if forests are cleared in the future.

Lead author Christopher Williams, a geography professor at Clark University, used thousands of field plots from the U.S. Forest Service and detailed satellite images to map forest cover and estimate how much carbon the forests held. 

Across New England and New York, forest loss is releasing an average of 4.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent each year, Williams found. The same states are losing out on an average of 1.2 million metric tons of carbon sequestration per year. 

“This forgone sequestration increases the climate impact by 23% above the carbon emissions alone, and that has been missing from previous studies,” Williams said in a presentation of the study’s findings to members of the media on Tuesday.

The losses are permanent, he said. 

“Avoiding forest conversion protects today’s forest carbon stocks and tomorrow’s carbon uptake and can contribute meaningfully to state level climate policy and action,” he said.

Vermont, however, represents a small amount of the carbon burden. The study estimates that deforestation in Vermont accounts for 200,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide each year, which accounts for both emissions and lost sequestration. The state loses an average of 623 acres of forest per year. 

By comparison, forest loss in New Hampshire accounts for 700,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually. Connecticut accounts for 500,000 metric tons, Maine accounts for 1.1 million metric tons, Massachusetts accounts for 1.3 million and New York accounts for 2.1 million. 

Vermont is second only to Rhode Island, which contributes 150,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, representing an average of 591 acres of lost forest annually. 

Vermont’s relatively small population is likely the reason behind the state’s low rate of deforestation, said Laura Marx, a forest ecologist with the Massachusetts chapter of the Nature Conservancy. 

Still, she said, deforestation in Vermont contributes to 3% of the state’s fossil fuel emissions. 

“I think each state has to kind of look at those numbers and make their own conclusions about, you know, are we OK with that?” she told VTDigger. 

In the United States, natural climate solutions like forest preservation “can provide a little over 20% of the greenhouse gas reductions and removals that we need in order to meet our obligations under the Paris climate change agreement,” she said. 

The idea isn’t to reduce deforestation to zero, she said. Certain types of land development are necessary. But the analysis gives landowners and policy makers a reference point that could be useful for planning. 

So much carbon is stored in forests that, when they’re cut down, the carbon released is “irrecoverable on any meaningful human or climate change timescale,” Marx said during Tuesday’s presentation.

“What I mean by that is, if I take 25 acres of forest and I pave them over, there isn’t really any amount of tree planting on another 25 acres, or changes to how I do forestry, that can gain back as much carbon as I just lost by deforesting that 25 acres,” she said.

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Are seed-sowing drones the answer to global deforestation?

Drones are being used to replant degraded areas of forest in Brazil – how successful have they been so far?

Santa Cruz Cabralia, Bahia, Brazil – With a loud whir, the drone takes flight. Minutes later, the humming sound gives way to a distinctive rattling as the machine, hovering about 20 metres above the ground, begins unloading its precious cargo and a cocktail of seeds rains down onto the land below.

Given time, these seeds will grow into trees and, eventually, it is hoped, a thriving forest will stand where there was once just sparse vegetation.

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That is what the startup which operates this drone, a large contraption that looks a bit like a Pokemon ball with antennae, hopes.

The 54 hectares (133 acres) here which have been badly degraded by agriculture and cattle farming in the Brazilian state of Bahia are just the start. Franco-Brazilian company Morfo has set itself the target of restoring one million hectares of degraded land in Brazil by 2030, using seed-sowing drones and a rigorously researched preparation and monitoring process.

How big a problem is deforestation?

Deforestation is a rapidly growing problem in many countries. In Brazil , for example, deforestation in the Amazon destroyed an area bigger than Spain between 2000 and 2018, a study by the Amazon Geo-Referenced Socio-Environmental Information Network (RAISG) showed in 2020. Although preliminary data from the government’s space research institute (INPE) shows Amazon deforestation fell by 50 percent last year, forest loss continues to rise in other biomes, like the Cerrado.

In Afghanistan , years of war and fighting have had a devastating effect on forests. Many have been completely destroyed. According to the research group World Rainforests, more than one-third of Afghanistan’s forests were destroyed between 1990 and 2005. By 2013, this had risen to half because of the additional problem of illegal logging.

And, in Colombia , internal violence and displacement have pushed armed groups, farmers and cattle farmers into the forests, causing more deforestation. In 2016 alone, after a peace deal was rejected by some armed groups, deforestation rose by 44 percent. President Gustavo Petro has since overseen a decrease in forest loss, by as much as 49 percent in 2023 according to Global Forest Watch, but deforestation has increased in other Amazon countries like Bolivia.

Wildfires in many parts of the world, notably Australia , California and around the Mediterranean in recent years, have also contributed to deforestation. Most recently, thousands of people have been evacuated in the past week because of wildfires in British Columbia and Alberta in Canada.

Why is forest restoration important?

“Climate change is happening, temperatures are rising, it’s already too late. So we need to be planting [trees] now,” says Adrien Pages, Morfo’s co-founder and CEO.

Healthy forests are a critical resource in the fight against climate change; they provide valuable ecosystem services such as carbon storage, temperature regulation, water resources and biodiversity conservation. Nearly one  billion people depend on forests for their livelihood, according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Simply conserving those forests which remain is insufficient, so the United Nations has urged countries to meet pledges to restore a combined one billion hectares of degraded land by 2030 to avoid large-scale ecosystem collapse.

But that is a daunting task. Brazil, for example, has promised to reforest 12 million hectares by the end of this decade – a target which requires planting an area the size of England, or eight billion trees , according to ((o))eco, the Brazilian environmental journalism platform.

How can drone technology help?

Traditional reforestation, where seedlings are grown in a nursery and then planted by hand, is effective, but it is labour intensive and time consuming. Drones can help speed up the process and reach areas which are dangerous or inaccessible to humans.

Morfo uses two drones which have been adapted to carry 10kg to 30kg of seeds and can sow up to 50 hectares per day, piloted automatically or manually depending on the terrain. The height at which the drone flies and the density and type of seeds it disperses all depend on a sowing plan, designed following an examination of the land’s environmental conditions.

“For us, it’s not about the drone. The most important thing is the preparation and the seeds,” says Pages.

With data from drone and satellite imagery as well as information collected by a team on the ground, data scientists use computer vision – a form of artificial intelligence – to develop models that can recognise trees and seed species. These are used to automate the creation of an optimal seeding strategy and to monitor results.

“The scalability of the solution is what’s important to us. The starting costs of the project are going to be high, to allow for diagnosis, research, adequate preparation, but after that, costs per hectare are relatively low and fall as the area grows,” says Pages.

What sorts of seeds are used?

“Seed availability is one of the biggest concerns. And the survival rate of seeds is low, so you need to have a lot of seeds,” says Mikey Mohan, the founder of ecoresolve, a US-based ecosystem restoration company.

Morfo is working to address this. It has developed a biodegradable seedpod to sow smaller and more fragile seeds which have an 80 percent survival rate in the lab. The project in southern Bahia, a region where the Atlantic Forest began to be cleared for agriculture centuries ago and which is now overrun with monocultures of eucalyptus and sugarcane, is a testing ground for different seeding methods to work out how best to grow native species.

It is also researching these species’ resistance to climate change to ensure the trees being planted here will be standing 100 years from now without the need for human intervention.

Overall the Atlantic Forest, a biome that stretches along Brazil’s densely populated coastline, has lost more than 88 percent of its original tree cover, according to the NGO SOS Mata Atlantica.

“Our goal is to restore a functional ecosystem. The idea is to assess which species are more efficient and optimise the quantity of seeds we are using,” explains Morfo’s chief scientific officer, Emira Cherif.

Sowing non-native cover plants first – low-growing vegetation like leguminous plants which protect the soil and provide other benefits such as fixing nitrogen in the soil – can increase the germination rate of native pioneer species.

Sourcing seeds is one of the ways companies like Morfo are including local communities in their restoration efforts. “Seed collection is a good way of valuing people, of creating lasting green jobs, and of protecting a standing, growing forest,” says Pages.

Last year, Morfo worked with 1,000 seed collectors across Brazil, such as Crispim Barbosa de Jesus, a 51-year-old subsistence farmer who started supplementing his income by collecting seeds after taking a course offered by a local NGO.

Barbosa, who worked cutting down trees for coal in his youth, sees the forest in a new light since becoming a seed collector. “Nature is so beautiful, you see the resistance of the trees. I feel better when I’m in the forest,” he says, adding that “collecting seeds is a job that elevates people”. He currently leads a team of seven, mostly young, men – including two of his sons – to provide native seeds to a handful of clients, including Morfo.

Where else are drones being used to reseed forests?

A small but growing number of companies around the world are using drones for ecosystem restoration. A peer-reviewed paper co-authored by Mohan in 2021 identified 10 such companies, many partnering with NGOs and helping restore areas affected by wildfires in Australia and North America.

In Brazil, nascent small-scale projects are primarily focused on private land. Morfo has a new partnership with Rio de Janeiro city authorities, but the 500 hectares (1,236 acres) it has planted for other clients so far – in the Amazon and Atlantic Forest – is all private land which has been degraded by mining or agriculture.

How effective is drone reseeding?

The newness of this reforestation method means there is little conclusive data on the long-term results of seed-sowing drones. A year into Morfo’s experiment in Bahia, however, preliminary signs are promising.

“Bahia experienced a big heatwave at the end of 2023. It was very dry, but you can see that our plants are doing quite well thanks to [the cover plants],” says Cherif, whose team of researchers spent a week in April measuring and cataloguing every sapling that has germinated since seeding last year.

The collection of this kind of data is key to scaling up the use of drones, according to Mohan. “To use drones on a larger scale, we need more research to understand the [seed] survival rate and how it can be increased,” he says. “You want to make sure that whatever you plant can actually transform into a tree.”

How to tackle the global deforestation crisis

Imagine if France, Germany, and Spain were completely blanketed in forests — and then all those trees were quickly chopped down. That’s nearly the amount of deforestation that occurred globally between 2001 and 2020, with profound consequences.

Deforestation is a major contributor to climate change, producing between 6 and 17 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 2009 study. Meanwhile, because trees also absorb carbon dioxide, removing it from the atmosphere, they help keep the Earth cooler. And climate change aside, forests protect biodiversity.

“Climate change and biodiversity make this a global problem, not a local problem,” says MIT economist Ben Olken. “Deciding to cut down trees or not has huge implications for the world.”

But deforestation is often financially profitable, so it continues at a rapid rate. Researchers can now measure this trend closely: In the last quarter-century, satellite-based technology has led to a paradigm change in charting deforestation. New deforestation datasets, based on the Landsat satellites, for instance, track forest change since 2000 with resolution at 30 meters, while many other products now offer frequent imaging at close resolution.

“Part of this revolution in measurement is accuracy, and the other part is coverage,” says Clare Balboni, an assistant professor of economics at the London School of Economics (LSE). “On-site observation is very expensive and logistically challenging, and you’re talking about case studies. These satellite-based data sets just open up opportunities to see deforestation at scale, systematically, across the globe.”

Balboni and Olken have now helped write a new paper providing a road map for thinking about this crisis. The open-access article, “ The Economics of Tropical Deforestation ,” appears this month in the Annual Review of Economics . The co-authors are Balboni, a former MIT faculty member; Aaron Berman, a PhD candidate in MIT’s Department of Economics; Robin Burgess, an LSE professor; and Olken, MIT’s Jane Berkowitz Carlton and Dennis William Carlton Professor of Microeconomics. Balboni and Olken have also conducted primary research in this area, along with Burgess.

So, how can the world tackle deforestation? It starts with understanding the problem.

Replacing forests with farms

Several decades ago, some thinkers, including the famous MIT economist Paul Samuelson in the 1970s, built models to study forests as a renewable resource; Samuelson calculated the “maximum sustained yield” at which a forest could be cleared while being regrown. These frameworks were designed to think about tree farms or the U.S. national forest system, where a fraction of trees would be cut each year, and then new trees would be grown over time to take their place.

But deforestation today, particularly in tropical areas, often looks very different, and forest regeneration is not common.

Indeed, as Balboni and Olken emphasize, deforestation is now rampant partly because the profits from chopping down trees come not just from timber, but from replacing forests with agriculture. In Brazil, deforestation has increased along with agricultural prices; in Indonesia, clearing trees accelerated as the global price of palm oil went up, leading companies to replace forests with palm tree orchards.

All this tree-clearing creates a familiar situation: The globally shared costs of climate change from deforestation are “externalities,” as economists say, imposed on everyone else by the people removing forest land. It is akin to a company that pollutes into a river, affecting the water quality of residents.

“Economics has changed the way it thinks about this over the last 50 years, and two things are central,” Olken says. “The relevance of global externalities is very important, and the conceptualization of alternate land uses is very important.” This also means traditional forest-management guidance about regrowth is not enough. With the economic dynamics in mind, which policies might work, and why?

The search for solutions

As Balboni and Olken note, economists often recommend “Pigouvian” taxes (named after the British economist Arthur Pigou) in these cases, levied against people imposing externalities on others. And yet, it can be hard to identify who is doing the deforesting.

Instead of taxing people for clearing forests, governments can pay people to keep forests intact. The UN uses Payments for Environmental Services (PES) as part of its REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) program. However, it is similarly tough to identify the optimal landowners to subsidize, and these payments may not match the quick cash-in of deforestation. A 2017 study in Uganda showed PES reduced deforestation somewhat; a 2022 study in Indonesia found no reduction; another 2022 study, in Brazil, showed again that some forest protection resulted.

“There’s mixed evidence from many of these [studies],” Balboni says. These policies, she notes, must reach people who would otherwise clear forests, and a key question is, “How can we assess their success compared to what would have happened anyway?”

Some places have tried cash transfer programs for larger populations. In Indonesia, a 2020 study found such subsidies reduced deforestation near villages by 30 percent. But in Mexico, a similar program meant more people could afford milk and meat, again creating demand for more agriculture and thus leading to more forest-clearing.

At this point, it might seem that laws simply banning deforestation in key areas would work best — indeed, about 16 percent of the world’s land overall is protected in some way. Yet the dynamics of protection are tricky. Even with protected areas in place, there is still “leakage” of deforestation into other regions. 

Still more approaches exist, including “nonstate agreements,” such as the Amazon Soy Moratorium in Brazil, in which grain traders pledged not to buy soy from deforested lands, and reduced deforestation without “leakage.”

Also, intriguingly, a 2008 policy change in the Brazilian Amazon made agricultural credit harder to obtain by requiring recipients to comply with environmental and land registration rules. The result? Deforestation dropped by up to 60 percent over nearly a decade. 

Politics and pulp

Overall, Balboni and Olken observe, beyond “externalities,” two major challenges exist. One, it is often unclear who holds property rights in forests. In these circumstances, deforestation seems to increase. Two, deforestation is subject to political battles.

For instance, as economist Bard Harstad of Stanford University has observed, environmental lobbying is asymmetric. Balboni and Olken write: “The conservationist lobby must pay the government in perpetuity … while the deforestation-oriented lobby need pay only once to deforest in the present.” And political instability leads to more deforestation because “the current administration places lower value on future conservation payments.”

Even so, national political measures can work. In the Amazon from 2001 to 2005, Brazilian deforestation rates were three to four times higher than on similar land across the border, but that imbalance vanished once the country passed conservation measures in 2006. However, deforestation ramped up again after a 2014 change in government. Looking at particular monitoring approaches, a study of Brazil’s satellite-based Real-Time System for Detection of Deforestation (DETER), launched in 2004, suggests that a 50 percent annual increase in its use in municipalities created a 25 percent reduction in deforestation from 2006 to 2016.

How precisely politics matters may depend on the context. In a 2021 paper, Balboni and Olken (with three colleagues) found that deforestation actually decreased around elections in Indonesia. Conversely, in Brazil, one study found that deforestation rates were 8 to 10 percent higher where mayors were running for re-election between 2002 and 2012, suggesting incumbents had deforestation industry support.

“The research there is aiming to understand what the political economy drivers are,” Olken says, “with the idea that if you understand those things, reform in those countries is more likely.”

Looking ahead, Balboni and Olken also suggest that new research estimating the value of intact forest land intact could influence public debates. And while many scholars have studied deforestation in Brazil and Indonesia, fewer have examined the Democratic Republic of Congo, another deforestation leader, and sub-Saharan Africa.

Deforestation is an ongoing crisis. But thanks to satellites and many recent studies, experts know vastly more about the problem than they did a decade or two ago, and with an economics toolkit, can evaluate the incentives and dynamics at play.

“To the extent that there’s ambuiguity across different contexts with different findings, part of the point of our review piece is to draw out common themes — the important considerations in determining which policy levers can [work] in different circumstances,” Balboni says. “That’s a fast-evolving area. We don’t have all the answers, but part of the process is bringing together growing evidence about [everything] that affects how successful those choices can be.”

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