TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The lost of tropical forests over the past year has doubled compared to 2023. The extent of primary forest lost in 2024 amounted to 67,000 square kilometers, marking the highest record in at least the past two decades.
The calculation of the extent of primary forest is derived from the annual satellite image study by Global Forest Watch and the University of Maryland, United States. The primary forest in the study refers to pristine forests.
Researchers in the study point out that the phenomenon of El Nino and the warming global climate have made tropical rainforests prone to wildfires. The combined impact has shifted the primary cause of tropical rainforest loss to land conversion for agriculture.
"Now we have this new amplification effect, which is a real feedback loop from climate change, where forest fires occur more intensively and severely than before," said Rod Taylor of Global Forest Watch, an initiative organization of the World Resources Institute, cited from a report by New Scientist, May 21, 2025.
Tropical forests regulate the weather system, store carbon, and cool the planet. However, in recent years, deforestation has pushed them to a transition point where they sometimes emit more carbon than they absorb, creating the mentioned feedback loop.
A study by Rod Taylor and colleagues found that the extent of tropical primary forests lost due to forest fires in 2024 was five times higher than in 2023. This amounted to 48 percent of all tropical primary forests lost in the same year.
Globally, forest fires resulted in the emission of greenhouse gases equivalent to 4.1 gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This emission is more than four times the carbon emissions from air travel throughout 2023.
Every El Nino phenomenon is linked to a warmer and drier tropical regional climate. Last year, El Nino was officially declared to have ended in April, but its effects continued as the tropical rainforest soil and vegetation dried out, fueling the rise in air temperature and forest fires during the El Nino period from 2023 to 2024.
"The warming global climate also plays a role, with 2024 becoming the hottest year on record and Brazil experiencing its most extreme drought in seven decades," said Ane Alencar of the Amazon Environmental Research Institute in Belm, Brazil.
Brazil lost 28 thousand square kilometers of forest-its largest since 2016-or about 42 percent of all tropical primary forests lost over the past year. In the Amazon, Brazil, fires accounted for 60 percent of the forest loss, as people took advantage of the dry conditions to clear land for agricultural conversion.
There were also massive fires outside the tropical regions such as in Canada and Russia. Globally, the lost forests in 2024 totaled 300 thousand square kilometers, also a new record.
"Some scientists say we are not in the Anthropocene era, but the Pyrocene-age of fire-and I think this report shows it," said Erika Berenguer of the University of Oxford.
While forest fires are alarming, Berenguer cautioned that the existing figures may include forest degradation. She pointed out that forest cover loss is not only due to land clearance.
"Degradation reduces carbon storage and biodiversity and increases vulnerability to future fires, but this is not the same as converting forests into vegetable gardens," she said.
According to Alencar, the study report shows how degradation and global warming from year to year have made tropical rainforests fragile.
"Typically with Amazon fires, you would see degradation, but the forest can recover," she said. "However, this report shows that when the Amazon experiences a very strong drought, it will create perfect conditions for intense forest fires, reaching a point where the forest will be completely lost."
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