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Forests

Net forest-area loss

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reports that the world forest area shrank by a net 4.12 million hectares a year in 2015 to 2025, down from 10.7 million hectares a year in 1990 to 2000.

Global Forest Resources Assessment 2025 · 4.12 million hectares a year · 2015 to 2025

Two patches of forest among cleared cotton fields in northwest Mato Grosso, Brazil, with a dirt road between them.

Two patches of forest among cleared cotton fields in northwest Mato Grosso, Brazil, near the Xingu Indigenous Park, with a dirt road between them.

Photo: Pedro Biondi, Agência Brasil, via Wikimedia Commons, licence Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Brazil. ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/br/deed.en )

What it is

The Global Forest Resources Assessment 2025 of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reports that the annual rate of net forest loss fell from 10.7 million hectares in 1990 to 2000 to 4.12 million hectares in 2015 to 2025. Net change in forest area is the area deforested in a period minus the area of forest expansion. When deforestation is greater than expansion, there is a net loss. Deforestation means the conversion of forest to other land use, whether human-induced or not, including forest converted to agriculture, pasture, water reservoirs, mining and urban areas.

Why it matters

The assessment says the fall in net loss resulted from reduced deforestation in some countries and the expansion of forest area in others. Deforestation slowed to 10.9 million hectares a year in 2015 to 2025, down from 17.6 million in 1990 to 2000 and 13.6 million in 2000 to 2015. The organization describes 10.9 million hectares a year as still too high. An estimated 489 million hectares of forest were lost through deforestation between 1990 and 2025.

How to read it

Net change and deforestation are related, and the assessment reports them as separate numbers. Forest expansion, through afforestation and natural expansion, fell from 9.88 million hectares a year in 2000 to 2015 to 6.78 million in 2015 to 2025. The net loss rate was 3.68 million hectares a year in 2000 to 2015 and rose to 4.12 million in 2015 to 2025 because the rate of forest gain fell. By country, the largest annual net loss in 2015 to 2025 was in Brazil, at 2.94 million hectares, and the largest net gain was in China, at 1.69 million hectares. Asia as a region gained 1.62 million hectares a year, and Europe gained 1.44 million.

Limits

The figures are decade averages compiled from country reports, and the assessment says estimates of forest-area change dynamics should be viewed with caution because many countries and areas do not collect data on deforestation, afforestation and natural forest expansion. The sum of deforestation and expansion can differ from net change because the first two include estimates made by the organization, while net change comes entirely from complete time series reported by countries and areas. Most deforestation, 88 percent between 1990 and 2025, occurred in the tropical domain.

Sources

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