Wang et al. used satellite observations and phenological signatures to estimate that planted rubber (Hevea brasiliensis) caused over 4 million hectares of deforestation since 1993. However, their methodology has been challenged for misclassifying tree cover loss as deforestation, including young regrowth, rubber gardens, and other plantations. Their validation approach was biased, with clustered sampling points disproportionately located in China and underrepresented in Indonesia, and excluded “non-forest” areas from accuracy checks. A reassessment using visual inspection of sub-metre imagery and Sentinel-2 time series found that actual deforestation linked to rubber since 2001 is closer to one-quarter of Wang et al.’s estimate. This reassessment also distinguished rubber monoculture from jungle rubber (mixed agroforestry), which constitutes a large share of regional rubber planting. The critique underscores the importance of objective sampling, complete validation, and nuanced land-cover definitions in policy-relevant deforestation assessments.
Tag: deforestation
Potential for improved groundwater recharge and dry-season flows through forest landscape restoration on degraded lands in the tropics
As interest in tropical forest restoration accelerates, understanding its hydrological implications is increasingly urgent. While concerns persist that reforestation will reduce annual water yields—particularly in drier climates—we highlight conditions under which forest landscape restoration (FLR) can improve seasonal water availability, especially during the dry season. We examine the trade-off between increased vegetation water use (“pumping”) and enhanced infiltration and subsurface retention (“sponging”) following forestation of degraded lands, the recovery of vegetation’s ability to capture “occult” precipitation (fog) in specific coastal and montane settings, and the role of forest cover in enhancing moisture recycling and transport at multiple scales. A pan-tropical sensitivity analysis shows that in degraded landscapes with deep soils and pronounced rainfall seasonality, infiltration gains following forestation can offset or exceed evaporative losses, thereby supporting groundwater recharge and increasing dry-season flows in approximately 10% of cases, with an additional 8% showing near-neutral (slightly negative) outcomes. These findings challenge the assumption that forestation uniformly reduces water availability and underscore the need to prioritize dry-season flow recovery—rather than annual water yield—as a central hydrological goal of FLR. We call for trans-disciplinary research and long-term monitoring to inform forest restoration strategies, particularly in seasonally dry regions where water scarcity is most acute.
Options for Enhancing the Contributions of Forests to Social and Economic Resilience
In this Chapter we identify the resilience-enhancing potential of management and governance interventions, or ‘response options’ that have forests at their core or that could address forest social-ecological systems, for instance, by seeking to improve forest extent, condition, and biodiversity. Interventions may be focused on reducing the drivers of deforestation and degradation or on enhancing and amplifying positive forest-based actions (e.g., governance, social, cultural). We identify response options that may contribute to improvements in forest condition and/or the reduction of drivers of forest decline and degradation. We consider a range of more common and more nascent response options, and the overarching frameworks that may support their application. We examine resilience-enhancing response options by incorporating widely recognised social-ecological, resilience-enhancing attributes and placing an emphasis on well-being, including social and economic attributes, which have so far received less focus or, in some cases, been supplanted by environmental, legal, or technical priorities. We also consider the scale at which interventions are applied and their propensity to support incremental or transformative change, as well as the potential for divergent outcomes in the Global North versus the Global South. We explore whether common interventions are sufficient and if there are additional options that hold promise for enhancing resilience. Further, we identify intervention adjustments or calibrations that may be required to increase their resilience enhancing potential, and point to cross-cutting elements and approaches that may advance
forest contributions to social and economic resilience in particular, and to social-ecological system resilience more broadly.
The end of the hamburger connection? Livestock and deforestation in Central America in the 1980s and 1990s
Healthy forests safeguard traditional wild meat food systems in Amazonia
Amazonia is the largest and the most species-rich tropical forest region on Earth, where hundreds of Indigenous cultures and thousands of animal species have interacted over millennia. Although Amazonia offers a unique context to appraise the value of wildlife as a source of food to millions of rural inhabitants, the diversity, geographic extent, volumes and nutritional value of harvested wild meat are unknown. Here, leveraging a dataset comprising 447,438 animals hunted across 625 rural localities, we estimate an annual extraction of 0.57 Mt of undressed animal biomass across Amazonia, equivalent to 0.34 Mt of edible wild meat. Just 20 out of 174 taxa account for 72% of all animals hunted and 84% of the overall biomass extracted. We show that this amount of wild meat can meet nearly half of protein and iron dietary requirements for rural peoples, along with a substantial portion of their needs for B vitamins (18–126%) and zinc (23%). However, wild meat productivity is likely to have decreased by 67% in nearly 500,000 km² of highly deforested areas of Amazonia. Furthermore, the availability of wild meat per capita decreases significantly in areas with higher human population, greater proximity to cities, and more extensive deforestation. These findings highlight the urgent need to preserve the forest to safeguard biodiversity and traditional wild meat food systems, which will be essential for ensuring Amazonian peoples’ well-being and achieving several of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
State of the Forests 2025: The Forests of the East and Southern Africa
This publication offers a comprehensive, evidence-based assessment of the status, trends and governance of forests across Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda. Drawing on regional data, national forest inventories, geospatial analyses and policy reviews, the report examines how forests continue to underpin livelihoods, economies, biodiversity and climate resilience – while facing mounting pressure from deforestation, degradation and competing land uses.
The report explores key dimensions shaping the region’s forest landscapes, including forest typologies and ownership regimes; timber production and markets; REDD+ progress and challenges; legal and policy frameworks; community forestry; sustainable woodfuel management; wild meat trade; women’s rights and participation; and forest monitoring, data management and sharing. Across these themes, the report highlights both persistent gaps and emerging opportunities for more inclusive, effective and sustainable forest governance.
Beyond documenting trends, this report serves as a practical resource for decision makers. It identifies technical and policy options to strengthen sustainable forest management, improve institutional coordination, enhance community participation, and align national actions with regional and global commitments under the Paris Agreement, the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Sustainable Development Goals. Produced as a flagship output of the EU-funded East and Southern Africa Forest Observatory (OFESA) project, this volume reflects the collective expertise of researchers, government agencies, civil society organisations and regional institutions. It is intended to inform policy dialogue, guide investment and support collaborative action to safeguard forests as critical ecological, social and economic assets for present and future generations in East and Southern Africa.
Small persistent humid forest clearings drive tropical forest biomass losses
Tropical forests store about half of the global forest aboveground carbon (AGC)1, yet extensive areas are affected by disturbances, such as deforestation from agricultural expansion2,3 and degradation from fires4, selective logging5, and edge effects6,7. Over time, disturbed forests can recover, gradually restoring carbon stocks and ecological functions8. However, how recovery rates vary with disturbance size, type and location remains poorly quantified. Here we use a bookkeeping approach with spatially explicit vegetation recovery curves to quantify AGC dynamics in disturbed tropical forests during 1990–2020. We find that disturbed tropical dry forests remained carbon neutral, whereas disturbed tropical humid forests experienced a net AGC loss of 15.6 ± 3.7 PgC, primarily driven by small but persistent deforestation clearings. Despite affecting only about 5% of the disturbed area, these small-size (less than 2 ha) deforestation events accounted for about 56% of carbon losses, owing to persistent land-use conversion without forest regrowth. By contrast, large fire-induced carbon losses were offset by the long-term post-fire recovery. Over time, deforestation expanded into humid forests with higher carbon stock density, intensifying AGC losses per unit area. These findings highlight the disproportionate impact of small clearings on tropical carbon losses, suggesting the need to curb land-use changes and protect young and recovering forests.
Analysis of Ethiopian Coffee Value Chain for Compliance with European Union Deforestation Regulation
The coffee sector is of crucial importance to Ethiopia, directly impacting about one-fifth to one-quarter of the population and contributing around one-third of the country’s export revenue. Notably, nearly one-third of these export earnings are from European countries. However, this trade is increasingly challenged by the enforcement of the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), which seeks to curb deforestation and forest degradation associated with the consumption of certain commodities, including coffee. A core requirement of the EUDR is traceability of coffee to ensure it is produced and marketed free from deforestation. Despite its growing relevance, there remains a paucity of studies examining the implications of the EUDR, particularly with regard to its potential impact on Ethiopia’s coffee export value chain and the country’s level of preparedness. This study was undertaken to assess the compliance of the Ethiopian coffee value chain with the EUDR by collecting data from both primary and supporting value chain actors and stakeholders. The analysis employed the Structure-Conduct-Performance framework. The findings reveal that forest and semi-forest coffee production systems, as well as coffee value chain channels involving investors, cooperatives/unions, and processor-exporters, demonstrate greater alignment with EUDR requirements, owing to their product uniformity and traceability. Four categories of incompliance were identified: “Information,” “Product,” “Market,” and “Procedural”. To address this, Ethiopia should consider adopting a phase-based compliance approach, expanding cooperative membership and outgrower schemes, enhancing oversight of product aggregation, developing technological support systems for EU operators, strengthening the national taskforce, and providing incentives to smallholder producers. By implementing these measures and reinforcing collaboration with the EU, Ethiopia can maintain access to EU markets. Furthermore, the insights from this study may inform the compliance strategies of other commodities within Ethiopia and offer lessons for other countries with similar regulatory contexts.
Beyond Reducing Deforestation: Impacts of a REDD+ Project on Household Livelihoods
Understanding why forest conservation initiatives succeed is essential to designing cost-effective programs. In this study, we investigate the impacts of a REDD+ project on both environmental and livelihood outcomes in the Brazilian Transamazon region, an area with historically high deforestation rates. Using counterfactual impact evaluation methods applied to survey and remote-sensing data, we assess the impact of the project over 2013–2019, from its first year until two years after its end. Based on a theory of change, we focus on land use and socioeconomic outcomes affected by the initiative. Our findings reveal specific impact mechanisms: forest conservation occurred primarily through reducing pasture expansion, while cattle production was maintained through intensification (increased stocking rates). Additionally, the project led to significantly higher agrobiodiversity among participating farms and promoted alternative livelihoods that generated greater revenue while using less land. These results suggest that conservation programs that combine conditional payments with technical assistance and support for adopting low-impact activities can effectively reduce deforestation in the short term and induce lasting changes in production systems, with positive effects persisting even after program completion.
Demystifying the Romanticized Narratives About Carbon Credits From Voluntary Forest Conservation
Carbon offset projects aimed at avoiding deforestation and forest degradation, generally labeled “REDD+,” are frequently promoted as a pivotal tool to mitigate climate change, promising to offer additional co-benefits for biodiversity and local communities. Despite this optimism, most positive impacts claimed by these initiatives in the voluntary carbon market (VCM) lack empirical support and are instead based on the hopeful narratives of stakeholders with clear conflicts of interest. We critically examine the scientific theories, concepts, and evidence regarding VCM’s REDD+ projects, highlighting limitations on the quantification of their purported benefits that are inherent to the current design of carbon markets. Independent studies consistently point to shortcomings in the rigor and credibility of crediting methodologies and other procedures, which market players have been slow or reluctant to address. There is accumulating evidence that projects’ climate and social impacts are often exaggerated due to a range of technical and practical shortcomings. We hope this work clarifies widespread misconceptions associated with REDD+ projects in the VCM and assists organizations and policymakers in their efforts to meaningfully mitigate climate change.