Study: Amount of forest per person has shrunk by nearly two thirds

By Gwyn Wright via SWNS

The amount of forest per person in the world has shrunk by nearly two thirds, according to a new study.

Tree cover has fallen from 3.4 acres (1.4 hectares) per person in 1960 to just 1.2 acres (0.5 hectares) per person in 2019.

In total, the world has lost more than 200 million acres (81 million hectares) of forest in the last 60 years.

The drastic reduction impacts the lives of 1.6 billion people who depend on them and puts wildlife at risk.

More than a billion acres (437 million hectares) has died or been cut down while just over 877 million acres (355 million hectares) of woodland has been planted since 1960.

The amount of forest that has been chopped down is around the same size as Borneo- an island that spans three countries and is more than three times the size of Britain.

For the study, the researchers used data on global land use to examine how forests have changed over time.

The decline coincided with a huge increase in the world’s population from just over three billion in 1960 to more than 7.5 billion today.

Results also revealed that deforestation has mainly affected poorer countries while new trees have tended to be planted in richer ones.

Lead study author Dr. Ronald Estoque from the Center for Biodiversity and Climate Change, Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute in Japan said: "Despite forest loss occurring primarily in less developed countries, the role of more developed nations in forest loss needs to be studied more deeply.

"With the strengthening of forest conservation in more developed countries, forest loss is displaced to less developed countries, especially in the tropics.

"Today, monitoring the world’s forests is an integral part of various global environmental and social initiatives including the Sustainable Development Goals, Paris Climate Agreement and the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.

"To help achieve the goals of these initiatives, there is a profound need to reverse, or at least flatten, the global net forest loss curve by conserving the world’s remaining forests and restoring and rehabilitating degraded forest landscapes.’’

The findings were published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.