After the deadly November floods on Indonesia’s Sumatra island, towns were choked with downed trees that had acted like battering rams.
The disaster, sparked by a rare equatorial cyclone, marks a worsening trend of extreme rainfall in the region, following decades of deforestation that has altered the land by removing natural flood defenses and disturbing peat-rich soil that holds carbon dioxide.
Intense rain can quickly saturate soil, even in areas where tree cover is undisturbed. But as forests are destroyed by fire or operations related to mining, agriculture and commercial palm oil plantations, a key buffer against floodwater and runoff is removed when they’re cut down.
“On a global scale, deforestation has an impact on climate change because we are removing the carbon stock that are in the forest, and we are emitting greenhouse gases,” said Robert Nasi, director general of the Center for International Forestry Research in central Indonesia.
