Which industry causes most deforestation globally?

61% of people get this wrong

Many people wrongly assume that sustainable palm oil is a large contributor to deforestation. In fact, beef and cattle farming accounts for more forest loss than anything else – about 41% of the total. That’s 2.1 million hectares each year or roughly half the size of the Netherlands.

Palm oil accounts for 3.8% of deforestation. This industry still has a lot of work to do to reduce its impact on the environment but are responding by planting over 1 million indigenous trees to support local biodiversity in Sarawak, Malaysia.

Palm oil-related deforestation has fallen by 42% in the first six months of 2021 and 71% compared to the first half of 2019, with 11,500 hectares of forests lost in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Papua New Guinea, according to satellite analysis published by Chain Reaction Research (CRR). This compares to 19,894 ha in the first half of 2020 and 40,000 ha in the first half of 2019, which shows that palm oil production is becoming more sustainable. **

**Chain Reaction Research (CRR), a risk analysis group