WWF says coronavirus pandemic an opportunity to tackle deforestation
- A WWF report found deforestation has accelerated in the Amazon and Sumatra and Borneo islands, because of farming and palm oil production
- Over 43 million hectares were cleared in 13 years – but the Covid-19 pandemic could trigger greater action to safeguard forests, it said
In a new report, WWF analysed 24 deforestation hotspots across Asia, Latin America and Africa, and found that more than 43 million hectares (106 million acres) of forest were cleared in those areas between 2004 and 2017.
Fran Raymond Price, global forest practice lead at WWF International, said the coronavirus pandemic had made the links between deforestation and human health clearer in the past year.
“Where you have greater deforestation and land use change, you have the risk of new diseases being more likely,” she said.
The WWF report – which used the best-quality data available over the past two decades – found deforestation was taking place at the fastest rates in the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado, the Bolivian Amazon, Paraguay, Argentina, Madagascar, and Sumatra and Borneo islands in Indonesia and Malaysia.