The State and Fate of Tropical Rainforests

The document reviews Claude Martin's analysis of tropical rainforests, highlighting the shift from viewing commercial logging as the primary driver of deforestation to recognizing the central role of agriculture and agro-industrial land conversion. It details the importance of biodiversity, the role of protected areas and remote sensing in conservation, and the emerging threat of climate change, which risks turning forests into net greenhouse gas sources. The text also emphasizes the human rights risks faced by environmental advocates and the need to integrate natural capital into economic policy.

• Agriculture is the primary driver of tropical forest loss, with up to 70 per cent of deforestation historically linked to cash and subsistence crops. In Brazil, roughly half of forest loss is attributed to large-scale agro-industrial land conversion, while 12 per cent of Indonesia's loss is linked to the same cause.
• Tropical rainforests exhibit extreme biodiversity; for instance, a single hectare of rainforest can house approximately 8 million ants and 1 million termites. In the Amazonia region, there are an estimated 15,000 to 16,000 tree species.
• Conservation efforts have seen a fourfold increase in protected areas for tropical rainforests between 1990 and 2013. In the Amazon, a network of 400 protected areas across nine countries covers 166 million hectares, partly due to Brazil's decision to protect 25 per cent of its Amazon forests.
• Climate change poses a severe risk to rainforests, with the IPCC estimating that deforestation accounts for 15 per cent of total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. There is a risk that higher temperatures and droughts could make forests a net source of GHG emissions; for example, the 2005 and 2010 Amazonian droughts resulted in a loss of up to 2.2 billion metric tonnes of carbon storage.
• Environmental advocates, particularly indigenous leaders, face increasing violence. In 2014, an estimated 114 murders were linked to efforts to stop illegal logging, commercial crop land clearing, and large-scale hydropower development.
• Technological advancements in monitoring have significantly improved forest assessments. The 2013 Global Forest Cover Change map by Mathew Hansen utilized 143 billion pixels from 650,000 satellite images to provide a global scale map of the planet's forests.

APA

Vaughan, S. (2015). The State and Fate of Tropical Rainforests. International Institute for Sustainable Development. https://www.iisd.org/sites/default/files/publications/state-fate-tropical-rainforests-commentary.pdf

Chicago

Vaughan, Scott. The State and Fate of Tropical Rainforests. International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2015. https://www.iisd.org/sites/default/files/publications/state-fate-tropical-rainforests-commentary.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Vaughan |first1=Scott |title=The State and Fate of Tropical Rainforests |publisher=International Institute for Sustainable Development |date=June 2015 |url=https://www.iisd.org/sites/default/files/publications/state-fate-tropical-rainforests-commentary.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{vaughan2015state, author = {Vaughan, Scott}, title = {{The State and Fate of Tropical Rainforests}}, institution = {International Institute for Sustainable Development}, year = {2015}, month = jun, url = {https://www.iisd.org/sites/default/files/publications/state-fate-tropical-rainforests-commentary.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }