Tropical Rainforest Heritage of Sumatra, Indonesia
Sumatra’s rainforests are among the most important carbon sinks on Earth. The forests there have 720 million tonnes of carbon locked up in trees and soil. That’s the third-most carbon sequestered of any UNESCO World Heritage Site, trailing only the Amazon and the Democratic Republic of Congo’s rainforest.
But the new report shows that Sumatra has seen 5% of its forest cover disappear since 2001 due to deforestation. That’s tied to both logging and turning some land over to palm oil plantations. Chopping down trees has weakened the ability of the rainforest to take up carbon, and emissions from it have risen, including a sharp rise after 2014. In 2017 and 2018 alone, the forest released more than 8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, a metric that takes into account other greenhouse gases such as methane. In addition to losing the ability to sequester carbon, the forest loss is also having grave impacts on wildlife from orangutans to critically endangered rhinos.
