Hidden Costs of Deforestation: Linking Forest Loss to Public Health and Environmental Degradation, with evidence from Nigeria and Global Tropics

Abstract

The removal of forests is one of the important changes in land use nowadays; the consequences of this action are seldom reflected in the value of the products harvested. The literature on the ecological and medical impacts of deforestation tends to be taken up as distinct topics, with the evidence from Global seen in a comparison with the top primary forest-losing countries, Nigeria being underrepresented. This review fills that void by following the causal pathway from the immediate and root causes of deforestation to the environmental damage that occurs as a result of deforestation to the public health impacts that are experienced by rural and forest-edge populations. It brings together peer-reviewed literature, institutional data and grey literature primarily from 2015 to 2026 and arranges them thematically. Forest loss takes place as a combined result of agricultural expansion, logging, infrastructure development, mining and underlying socio-economic pressures, such as poverty, weak land tenure and population growth, that all contribute to the fragmentation of forests, which in turn leads to biodiversity loss, disturbed carbon and water cycles, and soil erosion. These changes increase the risk of zoonotic spillover, aggravate respiratory disease due to fire-induced air pollution, reduce water quality, reduce dietary diversity and have a negative impact on people's mental health who are displaced and dependent on forests. These pathways are recurrent in very different settings, as evidenced in the Amazon Basin, Southeast Asia, Central Africa, and Nigeria. Forest governance reform, secure land tenure, a One Health approach to surveillance, deforestation-free supply chains and well-resourced restoration are all intertwined pieces of one solution; addressing deforestation as an economic or ecological issue only will continue to underestimate the true price.