World's forests more vulnerable than thought, says Prince Charles

Improved tree-monitoring technologies have revealed some of the world's mightiest forests are in a more precarious state than thought.

But the same advances are also making it easier to understand how much forests can help to ward off climate change, according to a report prepared for the Prince of Wales' International Sustainability unit.

"There is a strong onus upon us to act," Prince Charles warns in a foreword to the report. "Given that the forests are in effect the planet's lungs, destroying them can surely only be an act of insane irresponsibility."

Forests once covered nearly half the earth's land surface, or more than 7.4bn hectares, mostly in tropical regions. Although estimates vary, at least 2bn ha has been completely lost as trees have been cleared to make way for farms, cities and roads, or logged for paper, furniture and other products.

This causes problems because forests help store water and are home to millions of species. It also has implications for the climate because trees absorb carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. Felling and burning them pumps a lot of carbon back into the air, which contributes to global warming.

Efforts have been made to stem the losses, especially in deforestation hotspots such as the Amazon, where tough action by Brazil has sharply stemmed losses during the past decade.

But globally, an area the size of Panama is still estimated to be lost each year and the report for the Prince's sustainability unit concludes the rate of deforestation is still increasing.

Today, only about a quarter of the world's tropical forests are in a reasonably intact state according to the report, which analyses what it says is a "burst" of new science underpinned by innovations in satellite, radar and airborne-based observation techniques.

"Deforestation can now be identified almost in real time," said environmental campaigner Tony Juniper, an adviser to the Prince's unit.

"That makes it possible to realise the extent of the problem and provides an opportunity to do something about it."

In Indonesia, another big deforestation trouble spot, some studies in recent years have found the rate of deforestation losses have declined.

But the report points out 6m ha of primary forest was still lost between 2000 and 2012, with 840,000 ha disappearing in 2012 alone - more than was lost in the much bigger area of Brazil's Amazon forest that year.

Pulp and paper production was the main culprit in Indonesia, followed by logging and clearing land for palm oil.

But one of the big advantages of the improvements in monitoring technology, according to the report, is the insights it offers into the impacts of forest degradation, as well as deforestation.

Deforestation, or the complete clearance of trees for cropland, pasture or other uses, has long been recognised as a big driver of carbon emissions.

But the impact of forest degradation - the loss of some trees in a forest owing to activities such as logging, roads, fires or mining - may be even more significant, the report says, opening new avenues for tackling climate change.

The extent of degradation has been significant in some regions. In Sarawak and Sabah, the Malaysian states on the island of Borneo, the report points to research showing there has been "massive" and previously undocumented forest degradation across 80 per cent of the land in the past 20 years.

When these and other studies are taken together, it suggests that degradation could be the source of at least 30 per cent and perhaps as much as 50 per cent of emissions from tropical forests, the report says.

"This is a significantly higher proportion than was recognised a decade ago, and implies a need to revisit the assumption that if deforestation can be curbed, tropical forest emissions will fall to safe levels," it concludes.

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