While the world is continuing to lose huge areas of forest, mostly in the tropics, woodlands are making a comeback in some countries. Since 1990, China has added more than 170 million acres of forest, an area roughly the size of Texas, according to a new U.N. report.
Overall, the world has lost around 20 million acres of forest a year for the past several years, putting it far off course from an international goal to end deforestation by the end of this decade. The biggest drivers of deforestation are the clearing of land for farming and ranching and, to a growing extent, fires and drought fueled by warming. Brazil, Indonesia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are seeing the largest areas of forest destroyed.
However, in large parts of the world forests are regrowing. In richer countries, where farming has become more efficient, deforestation has slowed or even reversed. In many wealthy nations — the U.S., Canada, Russia, and much of Europe — forests are making a comeback, according to the U.N. assessment. As India and China become more developed, they too are seeing forests return. Even as fires and drought destroy some forest, on balance, these countries are adding trees.
Since 1990, Canada has added 20 million acres of forest, India 22 million acres, and Russia 52 million acres, an area about the size of Kansas, according to the report. Russia is only surpassed by China, which managed to add a staggering 173 million acres, largely through aggressive tree-planting programs.
Over the last three and a half decades China has planted roughly 120 million acres of forest, according to U.N. figures, much of it added to contain the spread of deserts. Last year China completed a project, begun in 1978, to plant a 2,000-mile-long belt of trees around the Taklamakan Desert in the west. Work continues on a belt of trees around the massive Gobi Desert in the north.
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