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This year, I was on the judging panel for the Royal Statistical Society’s International Statistic of the Decade.

Much like , the international statistic is meant to capture the zeitgeist of this decade. The judging panel accepted nominations from the statistical community and the public at large for a statistic that shines a light on the decade’s most pressing issues.

On Dec. 23, we announced the winner: the soccer fields of land deforested in the Amazon over the past decade. That’s 24,000 square miles, or about 10.3 million American football fields.

This statistic, while giving only a snapshot of the issue, provides insight into the over the last 10 years. Since 2010, mile upon mile of rainforest has been replaced with a wide range of commercial developments, .

This calculation by the committee is based on results from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, as well as on soccer pitch dimensions.

Calculating The Cost

There are a number of reasons why this deforestation matters – financial, environmental and social.

First of all, the Amazon rainforest and depend on it for survival. It’s also the home to , many at risk of extinction.

Second, is in the Amazon Basin, supplying water to the world by releasing water vapor into the atmosphere that thousands of miles. But unprecedented droughts have plagued Brazil this decade, of the Amazon.

, in Sao Paulo state, some farmers say they lost over one-third of their crops due to the water shortage. The government promised the coffee industry almost US$300 million to help with their losses.

Finally, the Amazon rainforest is responsible for storing over of carbon alone. When trees are cleared or burned, back into the atmosphere. Studies show that .

Finally, as , the Amazon over $8 billion each year if just left alone, from sustainable industries including nut farming and rubber, as well as the environmental effects.

Financial Gain?

Some might argue that there has been a financial gain from deforestation and that it really thing. Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, went so far as to say that saving the Amazon is an and that “where there is indigenous land, there is wealth underneath it.”

In an effort to be just as thoughtful in that sense, let’s take a look. Assume each acre of rainforest converted into farmland is worth about $1,000, which is to buy productive farmland in Brazil. Then, over the past decade, that farmland amounts to about $1 billion.

The deforested land to cattle raising for slaughter and sale. There are a little over 200 million . Assuming , the extra land means a gain of about $20 billion for Brazil.

Chump change compared to the economic loss from deforestation. The farmers, commercial interest groups and others looking for cheap land all have a clear vested interest in deforestation going ahead, but any possible short-term gain is clearly .

Rebounding

Right now, , over three football fields of Amazon rainforest are .

What if someone wanted to replant the lost rainforest? Many charity organizations are raising money to do just that.

At the cost of over – and that is the cheapest I could find – it isn’t cheap, totaling over $30 billion to replace what the Amazon lost this decade.

Still, the studies that I’ve seen and my calculations suggest that trillions have been lost due to deforestation over the past decade alone.

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