The World Bank publishes the results of the inventory, here is what happens to the forest areas in Albania and how it ranks in the Balkans

The world has lost 2.4% of its forest area between 2000-2020, mainly from the return of forest to agricultural land, fires and the impact of other sectors, while in Albania the forest area of ??the country has increased by 2.5% during this period.

Albania had the lowest increase in forest area in the Balkan Peninsula.

The World Bank published the change in the forest inventory in 20 years and noticed that the greatest damages to the decline of forest areas were in Africa and South American countries, while in most countries in Europe and Asia the forest area increased. .

Forests are threatened by deforestation and degradation. The bank refers that degraded forests have been damaged by human activities such as deforestation or climatic and environmental events such as fires, etc.

Globally, between 2000 and 2020, the forest area fell by 100 million hectares, an area similar to that of Egypt or Tanzania. But the rate of deforestation has fallen from 16 million hectares per year in the 1990s to 10 million hectares per year during the period 2015-2020. Most deforestation occurs in tropical regions, while new forests are created mainly in other areas. Given that tropical forests reduce higher levels of carbon and provide habitat for more species than other forest types, their loss is more damaging to global CO2 emissions and biodiversity, the WB reports.

The reasons for deforestation vary greatly from country to country. Paraguay, for example, lost almost 30 percent of its forests between 2000 and 2020, mostly to convert land to livestock. In contrast, Vietnam implemented policies that limit deforestation and increased the area by 23 percent during the same period. Countries with tropical and sub-tropical forests saw major losses between 2000 and 2020.

The loss of tree forests between 2000 and 2021 globally was 11%. Forests are cleared to produce large-scale commodities such as soybeans, palm oil, paper, etc. or damaged to create mines or energy.

Increased droughts and heat waves due to climate change have made wildfires a more important driver of tree loss in recent decades. In 2021, more than a quarter of the global loss of tree forests was due to fires. Wildfires occur mainly in temperate forests in North America, Europe, Russia and Australia./Monitor