Why does deforestation affect the climate?

Every tree that is taken out of the forest sooner or later rots or is burned; whether as paper recycled seven times over or a piece of furniture inherited for years. A carbon stock that has built up over thousands of years in the biomass of the forest thus re-enters the atmosphere as carbon dioxide within a very short time.

Deforestation not only results in huge CO2 emissions that accelerate global warming. Forests have many other important functions for our global climate, which are not only lost through deforestation, but even have an additional negative impact on the climate.

The drought and heat that follow forest loss in turn have a negative impact on the forests themselves: Scientists estimate, for example, that a temperature increase of two to three degrees Celsius would cause large areas of the Amazon rainforest to desertify. Since deforestation also removes nutrient-rich topsoil and irreversibly displaces species, even replanting can never restore the original conditions.

1/8 to 1/6 of all annual emissions are caused by forest destruction and the draining of forest peatlands - so the loss of forest land has a greater impact than the global transport sector. And worst of all, for every tree we cut down, we not only emit more CO2 into the atmosphere, but more importantly, we destroy our greatest ally in the fight against climate change.