Climate Focus: Forest the size of UK is cut down every year

The world is losing an area of forest the size of the UK every year and the rate of destruction has accelerated in the past five years, a think tank says.

More than 26 million hectares of trees a year were lost on average between 2014 and 2018, a 43 per cent rise compared with the period 2001-13, according to Climate Focus.

In a report it said that it was likely to be ‘‘impossible’’ to meet an international target to halve the rate of deforestation by next year. That target was set in 2014 by the New York Declaration on Forests, which was signed by more than 50 countries including Britain, the US, Kenya and several African countries with vast areas of forest. Tropical forests account for most of the losses, with land being cleared to produce commodities such as beef, soy and palm oil.

Charlotte Streck, director of Climate Focus, said that plans to plant millions of new trees in many countries could not make up for the loss of natural and old forests. ‘‘They harbour a lot more biodiversity, they are much richer in carbon, they offer all these ecosystem services in a much more complete way than restored forest,’’ she said.

The report also said that there had been slow progress towards meeting another goal of the New York declaration which was to restore 150 million hectares of degraded land by next year. Less than 30 million hectares has been restored so far.

The report noted some progress in reducing deforestation in Indonesia after the government banned clearing of peatland and stopped granting concessions for logging and plantations.

Ingrid Schulte, who coordinated the assessment, blamed a failure to transform economic incentives that favoured destruction over protection.

She said that halting forest loss would take a serious systemic shift in behaviour by reducing demand for commodities produced as a result of deforestation, reducing meat consumption, investing in governance and protecting rights of indigenous people.