"Deforestation has killed more than half a million people in the tropics over the past two decades as a result of heat-related illness, a study has found. Land clearance is raising the temperature in the rainforests of the Amazon, Congo and south-east Asia because it reduces shade, diminishes rainfall and increases the risk of fire, the authors of the paper found."
"The researchers estimated that warming due to deforestation accounted for 28,330 annual deaths over that 20-year period. More than half were in south-east Asia, owing to the larger populations in areas with heat vulnerability. About a third were in tropical Africa, and the remainder in Central and South America. Researchers in Brazil, Ghana and the UK compared non-accident mortality rates and temperatures in areas affected by tropical land clearance."
Deforestation in the Amazon, Congo and south-east Asia raises local temperatures by reducing shade, diminishing rainfall and increasing fire risk. Localised warming from land clearance contributed over a third of additional heat experienced by people in affected tropical regions, on top of global climate change. Between 2001 and 2020, about 345 million people experienced deforestation-caused warming, with 2.6 million experiencing an added 3°C of heat exposure. Warming attributable to deforestation caused an estimated 28,330 deaths per year across the two decades, concentrated mostly in south-east Asia and tropical Africa, with remaining deaths in Central and South America.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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