Deforestation of tropical forests hit a record high in 2024. Fire caused almost half the destruction

“The signal in these data is particularly frightening.”

PHOTO Credit: NASA — Smoke from fires in Roraima, Brazil, February 2024.

Tropical primary forest loss hit a new record in 2024. The tropics lost 6.7 million hectares of primary forest, an area the size of Panama. Almost half of the destruction was caused by fire. According to data from the University of Maryland’s Global Land Analysis and Discovery (GLAD) laboratory, an area of 18 football pitches of tropical primary forest were destroyed per minute in 2024. That’s an increase of 80% compared to 2023.

The data is also available on World Resources Institute’s Global Forest Watch.

The increase in forest destruction is terrifying. It is made even worse by the fact that the massive increase is driven by fires.

World Resources Institute notes that five times more tropical primary forest burned in 2024 than in 2023. World Resources Institute’s Elizabeth Goldman, Sarah Carter, and Michelle Sims write that,

While fires are naturally occurring in some ecosystems, in tropical forests they are almost entirely human-caused, often started to clear land for agriculture and spreading out of control in nearby forests. 2024 was the hottest year on record, with hot, dry conditions largely caused by climate change and El Niño leading to larger and more widespread fires. Latin America was particularly hard hit, reversing the reduction in primary forest loss seen in Brazil and Colombia in 2023.

The largest driver of deforestation over the past 24 years has been converting forests to agriculture. This remains a key driver of forest destruction. But in 2024, fire overtook agriculture to become the largest driver.

The destruction was not limited to the tropics. Global tree cover loss also hit a record with extreme fires in Canada and Russia. In 2024, global tree cover loss hit 30 million hectares. That’s an increase of 5% compared to 2023.

“Particularly frightening”

Professor Matthew Hansen is co-director at the University of Maryland’s GLAD Laboratory. The Guardian reports him as saying that,

“The signal in these data is particularly frightening. Rising global temperatures are making forests hotter and drier, and as a result, more likely to burn. Given human ignition, even remote rainforests can burn uncontrolled.

“We have a lot of work to do to confront such a widespread, destructive and increasing fire dynamic.”

Elizabeth Goldman, co-director of Global Forest Watch tells The Guardian that the deforestation rate in 2024 was “unlike anything we’ve seen in over 20 years of data”. She describes the destruction of the world’s forests as “a global red alert”.

Goldman adds that it is “a collective call to action for every , every business and every person who cares about a livable planet. Our economies, our communities, our health – none of it can survive without forests.”

“This is a dangerous feedback loop we cannot afford to trigger further,” Professor Peter Potapov, co-director of the University of Maryland’s GLAD Laboratory tells The Guardian.

“2024 was the worst year on record for fire-driven forest loss, breaking the record set just last year. If this trend continues, it could permanently transform critical natural areas and unleash large amounts of carbon – intensifying climate change and fuelling even more extreme fires.”

Glasgow Declaration on Forests

In its presentation of the 2024 deforestation data, World Resources Institute refers to the Glasgow Forest Declaration, which was signed in 2021 at COP26.

World Resources Institute writes that,

Leaders of over 140 countries signed the Glasgow Leaders Declaration in 2021, promising to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030. But we are alarmingly off track to meet this 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.

In November 2021, I wrote that far from being a “landmark agreement” as then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson called it, the Glasgow Forest Declaration was “just another in a long line of meaningless UN declarations”.

I would have loved to have been proved wrong. Things could change, but the past four years shows no evidence that the Glasgow Declaration has made any meaningful impact on the rate of global deforestation.

Brazil and COP30

Forest loss in Brazil increased dramatically in 2024, driven largely by a disastrous fire season. The drought last year in Brazil was the worst in seven decades. This, combined with high temperatures resulted in a huge increase in the area destroyed by fire in 2024.

In addition to fire, primary forest was cleared to make way for soy plantations and cattle ranching. The rate of non-fire related destruction increased 13% in 2024 compared to 2023.

Deforestation in Brazil accounts for 42% of all tropical primary rainforest destruction.

The Amazon rainforest saw the highest loss since 2016. The deforestation rate increased 110% from 2023 to 2024. Fires were the cause of 60% of the destruction.

With Brazil hosting COP30 this year, the deforestation data must come as a wake up call that more needs to be done. And that the current wave of neoliberal policies to address deforestation, such as REDD, natural climate solutions, and carbon trading are simply not working.

If we don’t keep fossil fuels in the ground, the climate crisis will intensify, temperatures will increase, droughts will be more severe. And more forests will burn.