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The world lost 12 million hectares of tropical tree cover in 2018 – the equivalent of 30 football pitches a minute
It was the fourth-highest annual decline since 2001, according to Global Forest Watch, which uses satellite imagery and remote sensing to monitor losses from Brazil to Ghana.
"The world's forests are now in the emergency room," said Frances Seymour, a senior fellow at the US-based World Resources Institute (WRI), which led the research.
"It's death by a thousand cuts – the health of the planet is at stake and band-aid responses are not enough."
Seymour said the data represented "heartbreaking losses in real places" with indigenous communities. Most vulnerable to losing their homes and livelihoods through deforestation.
"Forests are our greatest defense against climate change and biodiversity loss, but deforestation is getting worse," said John Sauven, the executive director of the British branch of environmental group Greenpeace.
The loss of huge swaths of the world also has implications for climate change as they absorb a third of the planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions produced globally.
"But unless we stop being in the first place, we're just chasing our tail."
The study found much of the rain in the rainforest – mature trees that absorb more carbon and are harder to replace.
New deforestation hotspots
The rate of destruction in 2018 was lower than in the previous two years. It peaked in 2016 when about 17 million hectares of tropical forest were lost partly due to crawling forest fires, according to the WRI.
The study highlighted new deforestation hotspots, particularly in Africa, where illegal mining, small-scale forest clearing and the expansion of cocoa farms led to an increase in Ghana and the Ivory Coast.
Indonesia was a rare bright spot, with primary forest loss slowing for two years running, after the government imposed a moratorium on forest-clearing.
Indonesia has the world's third-largest total area of tropical forest and is also the largest producer of palm oil. Environmentalists blame much of the forest destruction on land for oil palm plantations.
"We hope that this is a sign that we are having an effect," said Belinda Margono, a director at the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry.
Last year, leading philanthropists pledged $ 459m to rescue shrinking tropical forests that suck heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at Global Climate Action Summit in California.
But experts said more needed to be done.
"Deforestation causes more global pollution," said Glenn Hurowitz, chief executive of Mighty Earth, a global environmental campaign organization.
"It's vital that we protect the forests that we still have."
SOURCE:
Reuters news agency
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