How bad is global deforestation?
The short answer: if the data is reliable (it may not be) annual forest ‘loss’—mostly conversion of land to agriculture—is small: a fifth of one percent and slowing. Does this small loss of forest add to net CO2 emissions, or reduce them, or make no difference? It’s not clear. In this post I take a look at the FAO data on global deforestation rates, just to get a feeling for the size of the problem from a climate-change perspective (there are other perspectives, of course, including land-care). The data on the loss rate seems is questionable because of the difficulty of collecting it. Given the uncertainty about the net-emissions of forests—see over the fold—the reported rate of forest loss looks to be insignificant for climate change (only). One of the themes of the Copenhagen Synthesis Report (available here) by a group of university researchers associated with the IPCC, is the impact of global deforestation on total CO2 emissions. Regrettably, the Report’s material on deforestation
