2018 Goal 1 assessment

Key messages

• We are not on track to meet Goal 1’s milestone of halving natural forest loss globally by 2020. Although partly offset by regrowth, natural forests continued to disappear at an increasing rate. Relative to 2001–13, the average gross annual rate of global tree cover loss was 42 percent higher in 2014–17 (the years following the adoption of the New York
  Declaration on Forests (NYDF) in 2014).
• When considering regrowth, average rates of global net forest loss in 2010–15 declined by 23 percent, compared to a 2000–10 baseline. Regenerated or newly planted trees are unlikely to offset carbon emissions from natural forests, however, and both ecosystem structure and function differ markedly between older and younger forests.
• In the tropics, there are no signs that aggregate gross tree cover loss is slowing: 2017 saw the second-highest gross tree tropical cover loss since 2001. This was fueled in part by continued expansion of agricultural production areas for commodities like palm oil in Southeast Asia and soy in Latin America, as well as fires in the Amazon and hurricanes in
  the Caribbean. Resolution of the long-standing conflict in Colombia appears to have increased access to forests previously occupied by rebels.
• As with tropical tree cover loss, 2017 was the second-highest year on record for gross emissions from tropical forests. Average annual CO2 emissions from tropical tree cover loss in 2014–17 increased by 68 percent compared with the baseline of 2001–13, heightening the need for renewed urgency in meeting NYDF and other climate goals.
• One positive development in 2017 was that tree cover loss in Indonesia’s primary forests decreased by 60 percent relative to 2016, corresponding to a decrease of 0.2 gigatons of CO2. This is likely due to Indonesia’s peat drainage moratorium, which took effect last year; tree cover loss in protected primary forests on peat soils decreased by 88 percent relative to 2016.