While farming continues to drive deforestation around the world, 60% of the destruction of Earth’s large, intact forests is caused by other forces. In particular, our research shows that more than one-third of this destruction can be blamed on the production of commodities for export, particularly timber, minerals and oil and gas.
Increasing global demand for these commodities, which are often exported through globe-spanning supply chains, explains much of the ongoing removal, degradation and fragmentation of intact forests in a handful of countries including Brazil, Canada, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Russia.
We define intact forest landscapes (IFLs) as seamless mosaics of forest and related habitats bigger than 500km² where there is no detectable sign of activities such as logging, mining or energy extraction. Although IFLs made up 20% of the world’s remaining tropical forest in 2020, they stored 40% of all the carbon held in these habitats. Since 2000, the global extent of IFLs has shrunk by 7.2%, a loss of 1.5 million km² – more than quadruple the area of Germany.
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