BRASILIA — Humans have degraded or destroyed roughly two-thirds of the world’s original tropical rainforest cover, new data reveals — raising alarm that a key natural buffer against climate change is quickly vanishing.
The forest loss is also a major contributor to climate-warming emissions, with the dense tropical forest vegetation representing the largest living reservoir of carbon.
Logging and land conversion, mainly for agriculture, have wiped out 34% of the world’s original old-growth tropical rainforests, and degraded another 30%, leaving them more vulnerable to fire and future destruction, according to an analysis by the …
Keep on reading: Two-thirds of tropical rainforest destroyed or degraded globally, says NGO