The End of the Rainforest

Last year we destroyed an area of rainforest equivalent to the size of Switzerland. According to a new report by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the University of Maryland 4.1m hectares of primary rainforest was chopped down in 2022. This was a 10% increase on the previous year.

According to the report the two countries with the most tropical forest, Brazil and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, continued to increase their levels of deforestation. Primary forest loss also increased significantly in other nations like Ghana and Bolivia.

The Financial Times has created an animated map which visualizes cumulative tree cover loss in Brazil since 2001. The animated map in Tropical forest loss increased by 10% in 2022 shows how Brazil destroys rainforest equivalent to the size of Belgium every single year.

Brazil destroys by far the most rainforest every year of any country. However when you add in the primary forest destroyed in other countries around the world the the amount of rainforest lost last year was equivalent to the size of the whole of Switzerland.

If you want a sense of how much rainforest this is then you can use my Size of Switzerland interactive map to overlay the shape of Switzerland on any other country in the world. This map was created with the help of webkid's amazing Leaflet Truesize plugin for Leaflet.js.