Rate of Tropical Deforestation

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that 53,000 square miles of tropical forests (rain forest and other) were destroyed each year during the 1980s. Of this, they estimate that 21,000 square miles were deforested annually in South America, most of this in the Amazon Basin. Based on these estimates, an area of tropical forest large enough to cover North Carolina is deforested each year.

The rate of deforestation varies from region to region. Recent research results showed that in the Brazilian Amazon, the rate of deforestation was around 6200 square miles per year from 1978-1986, but fell to 4800 square miles per year from 1986-1993. By 1988, 6 per cent of the Brazilian Amazon had been cut down (90,000 square miles, an area the size of New England).

The much smaller region of Southeast Asia (Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam) lost nearly as much forest per year as the Brazilian Amazon from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, with 4800 square miles per year converted to agriculture or cut for timber.