Canopy Tree Project
The Costs of Cutting Down Trees
October 14, 2025
Trees are absolutely vital to all life on Earth. To be blunt—humans cannot survive without them: they are nature’s air purifiers, constantly cleaning our atmosphere by absorbing carbon dioxide and releasing the oxygen that sustains us. They cool our cities and neighborhoods, protect our precious soil from extreme weather by reducing storm damage and flooding through their root systems and canopy cover. They feed us, provide us with raw materials for building and construction.
Entire ecosystems and millions of species, insects, birds, mammals, fungi, and other organisms, depend on trees.
Without trees and forests, we would not have clean water, safe mountain slopes, habitat for many animals, fungi and other plants, the most biodiverse terrestrial ecosystems, sinks for our excess of carbon dioxide, depurators of our polluted air, et cetera.
Prof.Roberto Cazzolla Gatti, University of Bologna, Italy
Nearly one-third (34%) of all global forest loss from 2001 to 2024 is likely permanent, meaning these trees will not grow back naturally. In tropical primary rainforests, which are vital for biodiversity and carbon storage, the figure is even higher, 61% of forest loss between 2001 and 2024 is linked to permanent land use change such as agriculture and urbanization.
This data highlights that a significant portion of the tree cover lost in the first two and a half decades of the 21st century is gone for good and global deforestation rates have put the Earth at risk of climate change acceleration. The case for protecting and expanding our global tree cover has never been more urgent.
Higher Greenhouse Emissions
Trees not only produce oxygen through the process of photosynthesis, but they are also one of Earth’s greatest vacuum cleaners of greenhouse gases, using carbon dioxide and, becoming vast carbon sinks through their trunks, branches and root systems. In 2023, the U.S produced 4,682 million tons of carbon emissions, accounting for 12% of the world’s total carbon emissions. That same year it was estimated that trees absorbed over 800 million tons of carbon a year in the U.S alone.
However, we are losing trees at an alarming rate. Within 2024 alone, tropical forest loss was estimated to be the equivalent of losing 18 soccer fields of forest per minute. Read that again, per minute!
As forests are cleared, not only do we lose the oxygen they supply, and their ability to absorb carbon but each individual tree lost also re-releases the carbon dioxide they stored back into the atmosphere, causing our Earth to heat up more in the process.
It is Not Too Late
A recent study found that 482 million acres of land worldwide — an area the size of Mexico — is available for tree restoration. While this figure is smaller than previous estimates, since 2022 this study has estimated that tree restoration holds the potential to remove roughly 5% of total global fossil fuel and land-use change emissions.
Projects like EARTHDAY.ORG’s The Canopy Tree Project help to reforest areas in dire need of rehabilitation, including areas with some of the world’s most at-risk communities from climate change such as Morocco, Madagascar, and Bangladesh to name just a few.
Declining Precipitation
Trees play an important role in the Earth’s ability to make rain, also known as precipitation cycles. They do this through use of evapotranspiration, which is the process of absorbing water through their roots and then evaporating it back into the atmosphere as moisture, through their leaves. But forest loss can result in decreased precipitation, hurting ecosystems and communities that rely on rainy seasons.
Critical tropical rainforests, such as the Amazon and the Congo rainforest, drive regional precipitation and climate patterns far beyond their borders, creating rains which are especially critical during dry seasons.
In many regions of the world, such as the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe, extended losses of precipitation has led to increased risks of drought and crop failure.
For example, the 2020-2023 drought in East Africa was the worst in over 40 years, with 5 failed rain seasons, that saw an estimated 43,000 people die in Somalia alone. More than 10 million livestock died. Following this East Africa drought, another drought struck in 2024, this time hitting Southern Africa, resulting in maize crop failure and widespread hunger in Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Malawi.
Stronger Floods and Storm Surges
Just as in dry seasons, wet seasons can also come with climate disasters that trees help to mitigate.
During heavy rains, floods, and storm surges often caused by rising sea-levels induced flooding, trees help to slow stormwaters, starting from their leaves and all the way down into their roots.
Leaves slow the speed of rain hitting the ground which gives the roots more time to absorb the water. Root uptake of excess water prevents soil erosion and is estimated to prevent nearly 400 billion gallons of runoff each year across the United States.
In coastal areas that experience intense hurricanes and monsoons, mangroves, a species of tree that is able to live in submerged, salty land somewhere between the land and the sea, act as important barriers to fast moving waters by taking the brunt force of the ocean’s waves. This limits inland flooding, erosion, infrastructure damages and human fatalities.
Mangroves are found in tropic and subtropic locations all over the world including in parts of Asia, Africa, the Americas, Australia, and the island nations of Oceania. But many mangrove forests are in decline due to human development as in the Niger River Delta, increased toxics and pollution for example in the Papua province of Indonesia, and through stronger and more intense storms triggered by climate change, such as along the Florida Coastline of the United States.
Threats to Indigenous Cultures
More than 1.6 billion people worldwide strongly depend on forests for food, medicine, fuel, and their livelihoods. Particularly dependent on forests are many Indigenous peoples who use traditional knowledge, sustainable agriculture, and resource management to ensure their forests’ survival. Traditional forest caretaking has been a way of life for Indigenous peoples worldwide for over a millenia and continues to benefit Earth’s forests.
In 2023, industrial development threatened nearly 60% of Indigenous Peoples’ lands in 64 countries around the world. In the Amazon, the world’s largest forest, as of 2019, 68% of Indigenous lands and protected natural areas in the region are under pressure from infrastructure, mining, oil drilling, forest fires, and deforestation. Of this 68 percent, 22 percent of these lands are subject to specific mining and oil pressures.
Trees also hold spiritual importance to many indigenous cultures around the world. Many trees are regarded as having spiritual qualities, including the sacred trees of Aboriginal and Australian First Nations communities, the western red cedars of the Coast Salish Tribe, and baobabs in the oral traditions of the Hausa people. A loss of trees is a loss of indigenous culture, harming spiritual connections, resources, and tradition.
There is so much more we need to learn about the Earth so that we can better protect it and conserve natural resources for future generations.
Prof. Jingjing Liang, Professor of Quantitative Forest Ecology at Purdue University, Indiana
Rebuilding Forests One Tree at a Time
Deforestation causes immense environmental and societal impacts, but supporting reforestation efforts like EARTHDAY.ORG’s The Canopy Tree Project — which has planted tens of millions of trees since its inception in 2010 — can help to counteract the devastations of deforestation. With your help we can continue this crucial work to strengthen communities worldwide, restoring forests and mending ecosystems for Our Power, Our Planet.
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