CANADA: A new and more dangerous phase of impacts on the world’s remaining tropical forests is emerging, threatening to simplify the world’s most diverse ecosystem including mass species loss, according to new UCL-led research published today in Science.
The impact of humans on these areas has been increasing for millennia and today more than three-quarters of the world’s remaining tropical forests have been degraded by human actions.
The scientists identified three prior phases of expanding impacts, the first when hunter-gatherers moved into tropical forests and the second following the emergence of tropical agriculture, some 6,000 years ago. Under both, the overall health of tropical forests was maintained.
Today, we live in the third phase, marked by much greater impacts, with distant decision-makers directing how land is used, including permanent intensive agriculture, often for soybeans or palm oil, frontier industrial logging for timber export, cross-continental species invasions, and early climate change impacts. The scientists term this phase the era of ‘Global Integration’, affecting even the most remote areas.
Lead author, tropical forest expert Dr Simon Lewis (UCL Geography and University of Leeds) said: “Earth has lost 100 million hectares of tropical forest over the last 30 years, mostly to agricultural developments. Few people think about how intertwined with tropical forests we all are. Many foodstuffs include palm oil which comes from once pristine Asian tropical forest, while remaining intact forests are buffering the rate of climate change by absorbing about a billion tonnes of carbon each year.”
