A Global Forest Watch report reports 4.2 million hectares of tropical primary forests felled in 2020, an area comparable to that of the Netherlands.
The expansion of agricultural land remains the main cause of the destruction of the tropical forest.
The area of virgin tropical forest destroyed in 2020 is equivalent to the size of the Netherlands: trees blown up in smoke or felled by humans at an ever-increasing rate, despite the economic crisis linked to Covid-19.
The annual Global Forest Watch report, based on satellite data, thus recorded the destruction in 2020 of 4.2 million hectares of tropical primary forests, crucial for the planet's biodiversity and carbon storage, or 12%. more than the previous year.
The country most affected is Brazil, with an area missing three times that of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, second in the ranking.
In total, the tropics lost 12.2 million hectares of forest cover (which includes all types of forests and plantations) in 2020. Not surprisingly, the main driver of this destruction is still agriculture.
But researchers are also pointing fingers this year at the heat waves and drought that fueled devastating fires in Australia, Siberia and to the far reaches of the Amazon.
"A humanitarian catastrophe"
These losses are "a climate emergency, a biodiversity crisis, a humanitarian catastrophe and lost economic opportunities," commented Frances Seymour, of the World Resources Institute, which is piloting this report.
According to the researchers, the pandemic may have had some negative impacts, with illegally felled trees in forests left unprotected, for example, or the massive arrival of people in rural areas.
But they stress above all that this crisis has not made it possible to change the trajectory of forest destruction and they warn against a worsening of the situation in the event of relaxation of the rules to facilitate economic recovery.