Deforestation surges despite Cop26 pledge

An area the size of Switzerland was cleared from Earth’s most pristine rainforests last year, suggesting that world leaders’ commitment to halt their destruction by 2030 is failing.

Last year, an area of tropical rainforest the size of Switzerland was felled.

This is according to a damning new report by the World Resources Institute (WRI), which has revealed that between the Bolivian Amazon and Ghana, the equivalent of 11 football pitches of ‘primary rainforest’ were destroyed every minute of 2022.

WRI’s satellite-based deforestation monitoring platform (Global Forest Watch) recorded the destruction of more than 4.1m hectares within this timeframe, an increase of around 10% from 2021.

It found the hardest-hit country to be Brazil, accounting for 43 per cent of global losses, followed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (13 per cent) and Bolivia (9 per cent).

On the contrary, Indonesia — where forest destruction has slowed for the fifth year running — managed to keep rates of loss near record low levels after significant corporate and government action during the last decade.