Warming Due to Tropical Deforestation Linked to 28,000 ‘Excess’ Deaths Per Year

The study, published in Nature Climate Change, is the first to look at human health impacts of warming caused specifically by tropical deforestation, as opposed to the burning of fossil fuels, its lead author tells Carbon Brief.

The authors find that deforestation alone drove, on average, 0.45C of warming in the tropics over 2001-20, accounting for 64% of the total warming in regions with tropical forest loss.

They also find that tropical deforestation over 2001-20 exposed 345 million people to “local warming”, in addition to the warming they were already facing due to global warming.

Six out of every 100,000 people living in deforested areas died as a result of deforestation-induced warming during this time, they warn.

This number is higher in south-east Asia, with Vietnam setting a record of, on average, 29 deaths per 100,000 people.

A researcher who was not involved with the study tells Carbon Brief that the “sobering” paper “reframes tropical deforestation as not only a carbon emissions and ecological issue, but also a critical public health concern”.