FILE PHOTO: An aerial view shows a tract of Amazon jungle burning as it is cleared by farmers in ItaitubaBRASILIA - Humans have degraded or destroyed roughly two-thirds of the world's original tropical rainforest cover, new data reveals – raising alarm that a key natural buffer against climate change is quickly vanishing.
More than half of the destruction since 2002 has been in South America's Amazon and bordering rainforests. The rate of loss in 2019 roughly matched the annual level of destruction over the last 20 years, with a football field's worth of forest vanishing every 6 seconds, according to another recent report by the World Resources Institute.
Southeast Asian islands, mostly belonging to Indonesia, collectively rank second in terms of forest destruction since 2002, with much of those forests cleared for palm oil plantations.
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