Deforestation and Land Degradation
Forest loss continues at millions of hectares per year, undermining climate stability, water cycles and food systems.
Severity score
61.4
Severe · default weighting
Trajectory
Worsening
What this is
The world loses roughly 10 million hectares of forest per year, driven by cattle ranching, soy, palm oil, logging and mining. The Amazon in particular is approaching a hypothesised dieback threshold beyond which large areas transition to degraded savanna, which would release enormous carbon stores and disrupt rainfall across South America. Land degradation more broadly affects a large share of global agricultural land and directly threatens food production.
Score breakdown
Loss of life
25Direct and attributable mortality, normalised across annual and cumulative tolls.
Lives negatively impacted
80People displaced, injured, food-insecure, exposed or otherwise materially harmed.
Financial cost
58Direct damage, lost output and health-system spend attributable to the event.
Environmental impact
95Emissions, habitat and biodiversity loss, contamination and irreversibility.
Trajectory
80Whether the situation is escalating, and how much worse it is plausibly getting.