UN says trees provide critical solution to climate change, as world continues dramatic loss in 2017

Despite international efforts to reduce deforestation, the world’s tropical forests lost 39 million acres of trees in 2017, an area roughly the size of Bangladesh, according to new data from the environmental monitoring group Global Forest Watch. That is equal to losing 40 football fields of tropical trees every minute for an entire year — making 2017 the second-worst year for tropical deforestation on record, just behind 2016.