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The UN estimates that every year as many forests are destroyed as the size of Iceland
  • According to a report prepared by the programme of the United Nations Association for the Conservation and Environment, 10 million hectares of forests are destroyed each year in the world, the size of Portugal or Iceland. The organization warns that deforestation accounts for 25 per cent of global gas emissions.
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The United Nations (UN) is alarming that forest destruction is taking place in the world in recent years. Deforestation, like intensive agriculture and other land uses, accounts for 25% of UN greenhouse gas emissions.

In a report presented this Wednesday, those responsible for the UN Environment Conservation and Conservation Programme have explained that 10 million hectares of forests are destroyed each year, which is a long way from achieving the 2030 target of ending deforestation and reversing the situation.

In 2022, 786,000 hectares of forests were burned in the European Union, 39% in the Spanish state, and 28 million tonnes of CO2 were emitted. Elsewhere in the world, similar quantities of forests and forests were burned last year by fire.

In Brazil, during the time of Jair Bolsonaro, millions of hectares of deforged forest in the Amazon, will be one of the tasks of the newly appointed President Lula da Silva, for which this year he wants to hold a summit with the countries of the Amazon.

According to the UN, once discharges from deforestation have been finalised and taking into account what forest repopulation would absorb, CO2 emissions could be reduced by 30% over the next decade. To do so, however, it is necessary to decouple forest destruction with the production of raw materials.

In the tropics, for example, the greatest destruction is produced by the agricultural production model, such as the production of palm oil, the cultivation of meat cattle, the harvesting of wood for paper … All this, in addition, reduces resilience to climate change, the report concludes.