The COVID-19 pandemic has sent shockwaves throughout the global economy, impacting businesses across disparate sectors and slashing an estimated $22 trillion off global GDP by 2025.

This impact underscores the need to better protect and restore the world’s forests, which act as a vital buffer by reducing the risk of diseases being passed from animals to humans, thereby providing protection from the impact of diseases like COVID-19.

Halting deforestation is also critical to achieving the Paris Agreement and Sustainable Development Goals. There is no 1.5 degrees Celsius without forests. All pathways considered by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assume a halt in deforestation and significant forest restoration over the coming decades - to be in line with a 1.5 degrees Celsius pathway, no further deforestation can occur from 2030 onwards3. Apart from global and local climate regulation, forests also provide society and businesses with other essential benefits - from livelihoods to water supply and regulation, protection from pollution, soil erosion control and a home for biodiversity. Forests are vital for a sustainable world.

Despite this crucial role and despite governments, financial institutions and companies pledging to eliminate deforestation from agricultural production by 2020, deforestation continues at pace: since 2015, an estimated 10 million hectares of forests have been lost every year4. The greatest deforestation driver is the expansion of commercial agriculture and tree plantations. More than half of all global forest loss associated with agriculture between 2001 to 2015 was due to the production and consumption of just seven commodities - cattle products, palm oil, soy, timber products, natural rubber, cocoa and coffee. Over 72 million hectares of forests were lost to make way for their production5. 

The situation in some regions is at a breaking point. In the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, deforestation hit a twelve-year high in 20206 and scientists are warning about reaching a ‘forest-to-degraded-savanna’ tipping point7. If flipped into a savanna, this could help cascade us into a “Hothouse Earth” pathway, accelerating and locking in much hotter warming, above 1.5 degrees Celsius, in spite of any decarbonization attempts8. With forest loss comes increased environmental risks as well as more potential pandemics and further economic impacts. Urgent action on deforestation needs to happen now.