Environment: Every year, 13 million hectares of forest are destroyed

Radio Netherlands reports around 4500 representatives from 160 countries are meeting to discuss the vital importance of the world’s forests and their relation to the climate, food supplies, housing, fuel and medicine.

At least 15 percent of the Earth consists of forest. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) says that every year, 13 million hectares of forest are destroyed. That is equivalent to 36 football fields a minute. The organisation says deforestation has a more adverse influence on the greenhouse effect than all the road, sea and air travel in the world combined.

To prevent a climatic catastrophe, the WWF says the felling of forests must stop by 2020; otherwise it will be too late.

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