Sectoral Indicators

Cattle grazing is a primary driver of land conversion, particularly in Brazil (where it accounts for 72% of the country’s forest loss). Indeed, between 2001 and 2015, the conversion of forests to cattle pasture around the world was five times higher than for any other commodity. Brazil accounted for 48% of this, followed by Paraguay (9%) and Colombia (5%). Globally, around 40% of deforestation can be attributed to livestock grazing (and this figure does not consider the additional land converted to soy plantations driven by demand for soy-based livestock feed).

High-risk products:

Oil palm is a popular crop owing to its 25-30-year economic lifespan, relatively low labour requirements, and comparatively high income-generating abilities compared to subsistence food crops. Land is cleared to make way for plantations, which includes the planting of crops and erection of processing mills on site (bunches of palm fruit must be processed within 24 hours of harvesting to maintain the quality of the oil)—and is most prevalent in Southeast Asia. Some studies indicate that half of new palm oil plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia replace forests and that this deforestation is very much market-driven, since annual peaks in forest loss for this purpose correspond with peaks in palm oil prices (offset by a one-year lag).

Almost all (circa 97%) land converted for soy production is in South America (predominantly across Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay). Today, Around 77% of this is used as livestock feed, for poultry, pigs and aquaculture. Research also suggests that as soy production expands into former pastures, it pushes this pasture further into forested land, expanding the frontier. This means that some forest areas that have been replaced by cattle grazing pasture may not be attributable to increased direct demand for beef or dairy so much as displacement caused by production of soy crops (although, in a reciprocal relationship, soy expansion is also itself driven by demand for livestock feed).

High-risk products:

Although cocoa is produced in 62 countries across the world, the majority (65%) is from Africa followed by Indonesia (17%). Research suggests that cocoa cultivation is an underlying driver of over 37% of forest loss in protected areas in Côte d’Ivoire and up to 40% in Ghana. Cocoa-driven deforestation in West Africa is exacerbated because the associated agricultural activity damages the soil, so farmers may expand to new areas, freshly converting land in the hope of greater productivity and yields.

High-risk products:

Natural rubber (rather than synthetically produced from petroleum byproducts) is derived from the rubber tree, which is now predominantly grown in Southeast Asia, which accounts for over 90% of global production (although native to Brazil and the Guianas, South American rubber trees often suffer from a fungal leaf blight). The remainder comes from South and Central America and Central Africa.

High-risk products:

Forest loss and land conversion from coffee production occurs predominantly in Indonesia, Brazil, Madagascar, Peru, Colombia, and Vietnam. Coffee plants become less productive as they age, producing fewer berries (the seeds of which are the ‘beans’), which then incentivises farmers to convert more land for the purpose of planting new trees.

High-risk products:

The timber sector covers trees harvested to produce, among other things, sawn-wood, plywood, particleboard, furniture, fuelwood, pulp, and paper. Existing forest can be cleared to make way for monoculture plantations, or trees can be felled and sold for timber and associated products (like wood pellets, derived from forests in West Africa and used to heat low-carbon boilers in homes across Europe). Globally, there has been a shift in the sector over the past couple of decades away from wood being felled from natural forests towards land clearing for the purpose of cultivating monoculture plantations. Although paper consumption in North America and Europe has decreased since the early 1990s, given the rise in digital communication, demand across Asian market continues to rise. 

Construction materials

Used for flooring, solid wood, laminate or parquet blocks; window frames, doors and doorframes; skirting, decking, garden buildings; telegraph poles, fencing, boat building; railway sleepers, tool handles.

Used as a component in industrial processes, e.g. for electricity generation.

Food processing

Used for smoked goods.

Used in magazines, books, stationery, office paper, boxes, packaging, tissues, labels, wet wipes.

Charcoal, sawdust, wood pellets, wood chips, firewood

Used for fuel.

Used for ornaments, handicrafts and high-end furniture.

In some areas, like Suriname and Guyana, hard commodities like minerals have overtaken soft commodities like cattle and agriculture as the leading cause of deforestation (mining is currently considered to be the fourth largest driver of deforestation worldwide). This is something of an accelerating trend: more than 35% of all mining-related deforestation in tropical forests from the past two decades has occurred in the last five years. Minerals related to land conversion are primarily gold, coal, bauxite, iron ore, and copper. Minerals required for ‘green’ or ‘clean energy’ technologies like electric cars also contribute to land clearing. Despite the increase in demand for clean energy minerals, however, 71% of global direct mining-related deforestation can still be traced to just two mineral commodities: coal and gold.

Used as a key mineral renewable energy systems across the world to generate power from ‘clean’ sources of energy like solar, hydro, thermal, and wind energy and to help the world transition away from fossil fuels. However, copper mining also drives deforestation across Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Subsaharan Africa, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, South Africa, Namibia, and Zambia. With indications that copper production is insufficient to meet the requirements of the transition to low-carbon energy sources, burgeoning demand and prices are also incentivising illegal miners. Indeed, illegal copper mining has risen in the Amazon as illicit gold miners diversify their income streams and across Zambia’s Copperbelt, where organised crime groups’ involvement is common.  

Used as a key component in batteries, cobalt contributes to lead clearing in Sub-Saharan Africa. Although it is hard to calculate how much deforestation in the Congo Basin is directly attributed to cobalt mining, since the region’s resource-richness has led to forest loss for many overlapping extraction activities, it has been estimated that millions of trees have been cut down for this purpose. The Democratic Republic of Congo possesses half of the world’s cobalt reserves (four million tonnes, as of 2022), and currently accounts for around 70% of global production. The high incidence of associated forced and child labour in the country when it comes to mining this key mineral has led commentators to coin the term ‘blood cobalt’.

17 scarce metallic elements which power magnets used in wind turbines and electric vehicles require land clearing for mining across China, Thailand, Myanmar, Brazil, the US, Russia, Madagascar, India, Australia, Vietnam, and Burundi, and have been associated with human rights abuses in many of these jurisdictions. For example, a six-month-long investigation by Global Witness of satellite imagery and local community interviews revealed that the number of rare earth mines in Myanmar’s Kachin state had expanded from just a handful in 2016 to over 2,700 spanning almost 300 separate locations by March 2022, with the area of forested hills impacted equivalent to the size of Singapore. This dramatic expansion, which is also financing groups linked to the military junta, is reportedly being driven by China’s outsourcing of its own rare earth mining industry to Myanmar.

Used in lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles, Nickel has caused deforestation across Indonesia to make way for open pit mining of low-grade laterite (from which nickel is extracted). Although laterite nickel tends to be found close to the surface of the earth, it is generally spread across large areas, meaning mines usually require expansive land clearing. Sulawesi, an Island of Indonesia, has lost more than half a million hectares of forest since 2011, and 36% of its remaining forests are occupied by nickel mining concessions – an area which looks set to increase, given demand for nickel is slated to grow to over 40 times its 2020 levels.

Predominantly used as a fossil fuel for energy production and industrial processes.

Used in wind turbines, televisions, magnets, and X-rays.