Africa's Green Lungs – Tropical Rainforest, sequestering carbon, making a living for millions, and home to unique wildlife and plant ecosystems, is under unprecedented threats. Global forest losses spiked in 2024, driven by a catastrophic increase in fires, according to a satellite analysis of the University of Maryland and Discovery Lab (Glad Lab).
Around the world, loss of tropical native forests – forests not significantly affected by human activities such as logging – have almost doubled 6.7 million hectares, or 18 million hectares in 2023, or 18 million hectares, or 18 soccer fields. It was not the first time that the fire was, not agriculture, but a major cause of the loss of global tropical nuclear forests.
A catastrophic fire
In the Republic of Congo, the level of primary forest loss increased by 150% in 2024 compared to the previous year. The fire, which was lit into an unusually hot and dry state, caused 45% of the country's 60,000 hectares of loss. Matt Hansen, a professor at the University of Maryland and co-director of Glad Lab, said the fire losses are “outside the current policy framework or intervention capacity and will rigorously test our ability to maintain undamaged forests in warm climates.”
WRI researchers Elizabeth Goldman, Sarah Carter and Michelle Sims said they need fire prevention, early warning systems, rapid response systems, rapid response equipment, enforcement measures, education on fire-free preparation of farmlands, and burns prescribed to reduce burns to reduce burns to reduce burns.
“While some ecosystems have fires naturally, tropical forests are almost completely human-raised, and in many cases they have removed land for agriculture and started to get out of control in nearby forests,” they add.
The Great Fire of Conflict
Human activities are destructive in other ways. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which lost 590,000 hectares in 2024, the highest loss on record – just 13% of annual losses came from fires, with 87% for other causes.
The Rwandan-backed invasion of the Eastern DRC led to flooding of displaced people who were forced to clean forests for survival. Other causes include wood removal, charcoal removal, forest clearing for smallholder farmers' farming, and changes in cultivation. There, the forest is cleaned up for temporary planting and the fallow leaves while the forest is regenerating.
The introduction of cash crops means that the scale of liquidation has increased and the fallow period has shortened. The concern is that “forests are not regrowing and cultivation is becoming more permanent.”
There is no easy solution
Teodyl Nkuintchua, WRI Africa's Congo Basin Strategy and Engagement Leader, has acknowledged the scale of the challenge. “The high DRC forest loss rates reflect the harsh reality our communities face. Poverty, conflict, deep reliance on forests for survival. Although there are no silver bullets, people in the Congo Basin will be fully leading the conservation efforts that support the rural economy.”
The ever-increasing deforestation is inevitable. The report found forest losses remain stable in Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and even in the Central African Republic, where conflicts have been broken. DRC's Kivu-Kinshasa Green Corridor was home to 31 million people, but in 2024 there were significant losses. It was able to protect more than 540,000 square kilometers of forests and promote sustainable development. Carbon credit schemes help the country monetize forest protection, but the production of commodities can be isolated from forest loss, researchers say.
The losses in tropical native forests alone last year will result in 3.1 Gigatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, slightly higher than India's annual carbon footprint from fossil fuel use. This requires frequent handling of natural and human fires that promote trends.
