- New stadium gives Real Madrid a headache
- Alonso, Manaea shine as 'Miracle Mets' blitz Phillies
- Harris, Trump trade blows in US election media blitz
- Harry's Bar in Paris drinks to US straw-poll centenary
- Osama bin Laden's son Omar banned from returning to France
- Afghan man arrested for plotting US election day attack
- Brazil lifts ban on Musk's X, ending standoff over disinformation
- Harris holds slight edge nationally over Trump: poll
- Chelsea edge Real Madrid in Women's Champions League, Lyon win
- Japan PM to dissolve parliament for 'honeymoon' snap election
- 'Diego Lives': Immersive Maradona exhibit hits Barcelona
- Brazil Supreme Court lifts ban on Musk's X
- Scientists sound AI alarm after winning physics Nobel
- Six-year-old girl among missing after Brazil landslide
- Nobel-winning physicist 'unnerved' by AI technology he helped create
- Mexico president rules out new 'war on drugs'
- Israeli defense minister postpones trip to Washington: Pentagon
- Europe skipper Donald in talks with Garcia over Ryder return
- Kenya MPs vote to impeach deputy president in historic move
- Former US coach Berhalter named Chicago Fire head coach
- New York Jets fire head coach Saleh: team
- Australia crush New Zealand in Women's T20 World Cup
- US states accuse TikTok of harming young users
- 'Evacuate now, now, now': Florida braces for next hurricane
- US Supreme Court skeptical of challenge to 'ghost guns' regulation
- Sparks fly as Orban berates EU 'elites' in parliament trip
- US finalizes rule to remove lead pipes within a decade
- Solanke hungry for second England cap after seven-year wait
- Gilded canopy restored at Vatican basilica
- Zverev scrapes through, Djokovic cruises to Shanghai Masters last 16
- Trump secretly sent Covid tests to Putin: Bob Woodward book
- Gauff answers critics: 'It's hard to win all the time'
- Neural networks, machine learning? Nobel-winning AI science explained
- China says raised 'serious concerns' with US over trade curbs
- Boeing delivers 27 MAX jets in September despite strike
- German 'Maddie' suspect could be free in 2025 after cleared of other sex crimes
- Italy seek Nations League consistency as Germany continue rebuild
- From boom to budgeting as reality bites for Saudi football
- Stock markets diverge as Hong Kong sinks, oil prices fall
- US trade gap narrowest in five months as imports slip
- Stay and 'you are going to die': Florida braces for next hurricane
- England 96-1 after Salman's century lifts Pakistan to 556
- Hollywood star Idris Elba champions African cinema in Ghana
- Djokovic rolls Cobolli to make Shanghai Masters last 16
- Milan's Hernandez receives two-game suspension after referee rant
- Geoffrey Hinton, soft-spoken godfather of AI
- Ex-Barcelona and Spain great Iniesta retires aged 40
- Duo wins Physics Nobel for 'foundational' AI breakthroughs
- German 'Maddie' suspect could be free in 2025 after cleared of separate sex crimes
- China slaps provisional tariffs on EU brandy imports
10 football pitches of pristine rainforest lost per minute in 2021
Huge swathes of tropical rainforest were burned or hacked down for cattle and crops last year, led by destruction in Brazil, researchers said Thursday, warning that climate change itself is making it harder to reverse the losses.
Some 11.1 million hectares (27.5 million acres) of tree cover was lost across the tropics in 2021, with 3.75 million hectares of that in old-growth primary forests, according to annual research by Global Forest Watch, the World Resources Institute and the University of Maryland.
"That's 10 football pitches per minute. And that goes on for a year," said Rod Taylor, who leads WRI's Forests Program.
Researchers calculated that the loss of tropical primary forest in 2021 resulted in the release of 2.5 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, equivalent to the annual fossil fuel emissions of India.
Over 40 percent of the total tropical primary forest lost in 2021 was in Brazil, where some 1.5 million hectares was cut down or went up in smoke.
That was followed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which saw nearly 500,000 hectares disappear, while Bolivia's forest destruction reached its highest level since records began in 2001 at nearly 300,000 hectares.
While the latest report showed a slight overall reduction in the rate of primary tropical forest loss in 2021, down 11 percent on a year earlier, researchers said rates remain unsustainably high.
Beyond the tropics, the report showed that boreal forests in the northern hemisphere suffered the greatest tree cover loss in two decades.
An unprecedented fire season saw Russia alone lose 6.5 million hectares of forest cover in 2021, the highest on record.
Researchers warned of a potential "feedback loop" where more blazes cause greater carbon dioxide emissions, which in turn helps drive temperatures higher and increases the fire risk.
- Amazon threat -
This year's data comes after 141 global leaders committed at the COP climate summit in Glasgow last year to "halt and reverse forest loss by 2030".
Since most of the 2021 forest loss had already happened before the agreement, WRI said the latest figures could be seen as a "baseline" for assessing its effectiveness.
But the researchers added that there would have to be a consistent and significant fall in the rate of primary forest loss every year for the rest of the decade to meet those goals.
"Climate change itself is making it harder to maintain the forest that we still have," said WRI's Frances Seymour, adding that this showed the imperative of cutting greenhouse gas pollution.
Recent research has suggested that the Amazon rainforest could be closer than previously thought to a "tipping point" that would see it irretrievably transition into savannah and potentially releasing vast quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere.
- 'Disaster' -
Brazil, which holds about one-third of the world's remaining primary tropical rainforest, has seen the destruction of its forests accelerate in recent years.
Non-fire losses, which WRI said are often linked to land clearance for agriculture, rose nine percent last year compared to 2020.
Meanwhile in the western Brazilian Amazon, the report said key states saw more than 25 percent increases in non-fire loss from 2020 to 2021.
"We already knew that such losses are a disaster for the climate. They're a disaster for biodiversity. They're a disaster for indigenous peoples and local communities," said Seymour, highlighted recent research showing forests help cool the air as well as storing carbon.
By contrast, in Indonesia government policy and private sector actions helped reduce primary forest loss 25 percent last year from 2020 -- a fifth straight year of slowing destruction, albeit from very high levels.
WRI warned however that the end of a temporary freeze on new oil palm plantations combined with a 40-year high in oil palm prices may threaten the country's recent successes.
"It's clear that we are not doing enough to provide incentives to those in a position to stop forest loss, to protect the world's remaining tropical forest expanses," said Seymour.
X.Karnes--AMWN