Forests remain at the centre of the climate crisis as record temperature rise and global warming threaten their survival, yet they are vital to humanity and nature’s very own survival.

Forests and trees contribute to community resilience, provide ecosystem services to people, support the soil’s ecological functioning and mitigate the effects of crop failure during droughts, says Eliane Ubalijoro, CEO of the Centre for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF) and Director-General of ICRAF.

“Eliminating emissions from deforestation and increasing carbon removals by promoting agroforestry and landscape restoration could reduce global net emissions by 30 per cent. Over the next decade, forests could provide up to 50 per cent of the cost-effective mitigation available,” Ubalijoro wrote earlier this year in CIFOR-ICRAF’s Forest News newsletter.

CIFOR-ICRAF scientists are helping to combat deforestation and biodiversity loss through targeted research and engagement through their work on tree genetic resources, restoration, sustainable forest management, as well as soil and land health.

Climate action

“We are also focusing on finance through our Resilient Landscapes initiative, which envisions a world where nature, business and communities thrive equitably in harmony,” Ubalijoro said.

“This CIFOR-ICRAF venture was created to spur large-scale impact investment in nature-based solutions, acting as a bridge between science and the private sector to tackle climate change, deforestation, biodiversity loss and land degradation,” he added.

She says if forests and trees are allowed to perform their natural functions undeterred, there is still time to bend the curve on climate change, biodiversity loss, as well as land degradation and stop the run of heat records in the long term.

Unfortunately, forests are facing severe restrictions in performing their natural functions for planetary survival, as CIFOR-ICRAF envisages. Global forest loss has hit a “frightening” record high with climate-fueled fires.  

Brazil and Bolivia led forest destruction in 2024 as the drought worsened fires and the land was cleared for large-scale agriculture and cattle farming.

Forest destruction surged to record highs as the effects of climate change supercharged human-made fires in some of the planet’s most critical carbon stores, according to an annual survey by the World Resources Institute (WRI).

The WRI report, based on new data from the University of Maryland, revealed that the world lost 67 million hectares of primary tropical forest last year – nearly twice as much as in 2023. Elizabeth Goldman, co-director of the Global Forest Watch observatory, said this unprecedented level of forest loss sends “a global red alert”.

“Every country, every bank, every international business continuing down this path will devastate economies, people’s jobs, and any chance of staving off climate change’s worst effects,” Goldman told Climate Home News, a digital publication covering the international politics of the climate crisis.

Primary tropical forests – such as the Amazon in Latin America, the Congo Basin and rainforests in Southeast Asia – are critical carbon sinks that help regulate the global climate by absorbing vast amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2).

In 2024, fires were the main cause of forest loss in tropical forests for the first time since WRI’s survey began two decades ago.

In the Amazon or Congo basin, fires do not occur naturally but are almost entirely caused by humans, usually as a quick way to clear land for agriculture.

But, while those humid ecosystems have historically been able to stop fires from spreading, hotter and drier conditions caused by climate change and the recurring El Niño weather pattern have now made them more flammable.

WRI Director of Forests and Nature Conservation Rod Taylor said the world has entered a “new phase”. “It is not just clearing for agriculture that is the main driver of forest loss,” he explained. “Now we have this new amplifying effect – a real climate change feedback loop with fires much more intense and much more ferocious than they have ever been”.

Latin American countries – home to the Amazon rainforest – led forest destruction in 2024 under the combined effect of surging fires made worse by extreme drought conditions and land clearing for large-scale agriculture and cattle farming.

Brazil alone accounted for 42 per cent of all tropical forest loss last year, the data in the WRI survey showed, more than reversing a decline in 2023 when it reached a low level under the new left-wing government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.  

Brazil is hosting COP30, dubbed the “forest COP”, in the Amazonian city of Belém.

After promising to achieve net-zero deforestation in the Amazon by 2030, Lula’s administration has introduced measures aimed at curbing forest loss, such as designating new protected areas.

But following pressures from powerful agribusinesses, states including Rondonia and Mato Grosso have recently approved new legislation that experts say could threaten a moratorium banning soy plantations in recently deforested areas.

Neighbouring Bolivia saw primary forest loss skyrocket by 200 per cent in 2024 – climbing to second place in the forest destruction ranking for the first time.

The dramatic rise follows the government’s efforts to incentivise large-scale agricultural development through tax breaks and subsidies, experts said.

Stasiek Czaplicki Cabezas, a Bolivian forest researcher at Revista Nomadas, said the expansion of agro-industrial agriculture and cattle ranching into forested areas has been compounded by the widespread use of fire as a cheap method of clearing land.

“Laws exist, but enforcement is minimal. Deforestation is rarely sanctioned and oversight in frontier regions is almost entirely absent,” he told Climate Home reporter Matteo Civillini.

Forest destruction also continued in the Congo Basin last year, with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) marking its highest loss on record.

Traditional drivers of deforestation – such as reliance on forests for food and energy – have been exacerbated by military conflicts.

Rwanda-backed M23 rebels have intensified their offensive in eastern DRC, grabbing large swathes of land in battles with government forces over natural resources, creating instability and displacement of people, and driving up forest loss, the WRI report said.

The annual survey’s only bright spot was Southeast Asia, with both Indonesia and Malaysia cutting forest loss last year by 11 and 13 per cent, respectively.

Concerns remain, however, over the expansion of plantations and mining, especially in Indonesia.

In 2021, at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, 145 countries pledged to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030. That goal remains way off track as forest loss keeps rising while the world needs to reduce deforestation by 20 per cent every year to honour that commitment.  

“Of the 20 countries with the largest area of primary forest, 17 have higher primary forest loss today than when the agreement was signed,” WRI’s Goldman said.

Experts say the solutions to reverse this negative trend are known and include support for deforestation-free supply chains for commodities, better enforcement of trade regulations and increased funding for forest protection and fire prevention measures.

But the political will to implement these is still missing.

Matta Hansen, a land use change expert at the University of Maryland, says this “frightening” data should not just spur concern but some form of action.

“Governance is the primary limitation, and we have to influence those governments in the face of increasing threats to these ecosystems”.