The world lost 11 soccer fields’ worth of tropical forest per minute in 2022 — a total area about the size of Switzerland and 10% more tropical forest than was lost in 2021.
The carbon emissions associated with that disappearance were equivalent to all of India’s fossil fuel emissions, according to the University of Maryland’s 2022 data on tree-cover loss, presented by World Resources Institute’s Global Forest Watch.
Forests are vital to sequestering carbon and maintaining Earth’s biodiversity, and millions of people depend on them for their livelihoods. But they are threatened by deforestation, fire and drought, and efforts to protect them have not kept pace.