We might never all agree on climate change. But we can probably all agree that trees are rather nice and it would be a good idea not to chop them all down. While it’s true that people need space for growing crops and building homes, we’ve learned to try to do that while keeping as much leafy cover as possible. And the numbers show that deforestation trends have reversed to the extent that in many places we’re now adding forest coverage. It’s a cheerful picture, although we’re, ahem, not out of the woods yet.

Here’s the picture from OWID:

There are two data sets, one on the left and one on the right. In both cases the bars show the annual estimate of change in hectares (ha). The brown areas refer to the tropics and the green areas refer to temperate midlatitude areas. From 1700 to 1840 the estimate is a loss of 19 million ha combined per decade, with a bit more in the temperate zones than in the tropics. Then from 1850 to 1920 while tropical deforestation increased a bit, temperate zone deforestation jumped and was larger. From 1920 to 1950 temperate deforestation again jumped a bit while tropical deforestation soared. But then things reversed in the temperate zone with deforestation sharply declining until the end of the century. But the opposite happened in the tropics: deforestation kept growing.

That’s the story in the first data set. The second data set, in the panel on the right, is from the UN Food and Agricultural Organization. It suggests that from 1980 onwards the temperate zones were afforesting or adding to total forest cover, while in the tropics the rate of deforestation has been dropping dramatically. So the two data sets agree that things are moving in a good direction, but the FAO data is more optimistic.

Either way, we are pleased that forests are facing less chainsaw action, even in the tropics. And of course we can’t help but wonder if all the extra CO2 in the air has helped this process along.