Global deforestation peaked in the 1980s. Can we bring it to an end?

Since the end of the last great ice age – 10,000 years ago – the world has lost one-third of its forests.¹ Two billion hectares of forest – an area twice the size of the United States – has been cleared to grow crops, raise livestock, and use for fuelwood.

In a previous post we looked at this change in global forests over the long-run. What this showed was that although humans have been deforesting the planet for millennia, the rate of forest loss accelerated rapidly in the last…