Deforestation
Got some good news and some bad news...
Forests are havens of peace as well as a source of the oxygen we need to live. In addition, they host most of the species of animals, birds and reptiles on the planet. Biodiversity is important because it is a gauge of how livable our planet remains.
According to One Tree Planted, deforestation results from the clearing of forested land for agricultural expansion, fuel or building materials, mining, and/or human settlement. Deforestation can also occur through wildfires and severe weather.
… [The] human-driven and natural loss of trees, affects everything from wildlife and ecosystems to weather patterns and the water cycle. And forests, which cover 30% of Earth’s surface, are critically important to just about every aspect of life, especially in the face of climate change.
According to the London School of Economics and Political Science:
When deforestation occurs, much of the carbon stored by trees is released back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, which contributes to climate change.
Deforesting is damaging the mechanism that takes the carbon dioxide that we exhale and creates fresh oxygen for us to breathe. Not too smart, is it? And a lot of deforestation has occurred where we can least afford it: in tropical rainforests.
According to Climate Impact Partners:
Globally, an average of … nearly 25 million acres of forest are lost each year, with most deforestation occurring in tropical forests in areas like Brazil, Indonesia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
In 2023 Aljazeera reported that under Brazil’s former President Bolsonaro, “average annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rose by 75.5 percent from the previous decade.”
Deforestation in 2022 was … at or near record highs during the crucial dry season months of August, September and October, when clear-cutting and fires often surge because of drier weather.
But the news isn’t all bad.
Reuters reports in 2025 that Brazil's current President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has anti-deforestation/reforestation policies in place:
The Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Amazon (PPCDAm) sets a coordinated policy across more than a dozen ministries through the end of Lula's term in 2027.
It calls for boosted use of intelligence and satellite imagery to track criminal activity, regularization of land titles and use of a rural registry to monitor correct management of forests considered vital for slowing global climate change.
Degraded forests will be recovered and native vegetation increased through economic incentives for conservation and sustainable forest management.
It will be interesting to watch how events in the Brazilian Amazon unfold. We know from our experience in the United States that valuable initiatives to slow degradation of the environment are sometimes lost with a change of national leadership.
In October, 2024, the World Resource Institute reported some very good news:
COP16, World Resources Institute, Conservation International and more than twenty partners launched the Pan-Amazon Network for Bioeconomy. This new alliance is dedicated to promoting a locally-led, sustainable bioeconomy across the Amazon, with a focus on economic models that prioritize the preservation of standing forests, the region’s rich biodiversity and the well-being of its local communities.
But nothing is perfect. Reuters reported in December 2024 that the initiative will bring some financial fairness to residents of the Amazon basin. However, many of the partners in the network are commercial, which can lead to conflicts with the biodiversity that indigenous peoples want to preserve. For example, the “intensification of acai into monocrop plantations to meet explosive global demand … one study found was threatening the integrity and biodiversity of the Amazon.”
DRC
The Democratic Republic of the Congo hosts the second largest rainforest in the world. In 2025, according to World Economic Forum,
Facilitated by new legislation passed by the DRC parliament in January 2025, an area covering 540,000 km² (the size of France), within which 108,000 km² (the size of Iceland) is primary forest, is in the process of being protected through partnerships with communities that integrates conservation and restoration with green economic development.
According to Mongabay, “… old-growth forests in Central Africa store huge volumes of carbon in their vegetation and tree trunks (39 billion tons, according to a 2012 study), serving as an important buffer against climate change.”
A consistent source of deforestation in the region is subsistence farming, but new threats stem from human energy needs. The peat bog forests of the Congo basin may sit atop a significant reservoir of oil. Deforesting these forests would represent the double punch of releasing carbon from the trees into the atmosphere so that we can then extract oil that will ultimately release even more carbon into the atmosphere.
Indonesia
Indonesia’s rainforests, spread across 18,000 islands, comprise the third largest in the world. According to Mongabay, statistics show a 90% decline in deforestation since 2015, but also that after sifting the data the actual improvement is more like 60%, and deforestation is on the rise once again.
Increased demand for renewable energy and minerals needed to produce electric vehicle batteries, such as nickel, also poses a threat to forests, the researchers wrote. Indonesia is the world’s top nickel producer, supplying close to half (48%) of global production in 2023.
According to World Resources Institute:
While demand for mined materials is still booming, the landscape is beginning to shift. For example, increased uptake of renewable energy and electric vehicles will require phasing out coal while also quadrupling the demand for critical minerals by 2040. This transition opens an opportunity to move away from past practices and minimize environmental damage from mining, including by following the “forest-smart mining” framework developed by the World Bank. This framework allows for a consultative process for reducing the impact of mining on forests. d
Plant a Tree
One Tree Planted is a company that plants trees for a modest donation. My wife and I often celebrate birthdays or commemorate the lives of relatives, friends, or relatives or friends of friends who have passed away with a few trees planted in their name.
Forests are the second largest source of breathable oxygen. The largest source of oxygen is the ocean. And that is a topic for another day.