Global forest loss fell 15% in 2025, but 2030 goal remains off track: assessment

The world lost seven million hectares of native forest to deforestation in 2025, a 15% decrease from 2024, according to the 2026 Forest Declaration Assessment described in SciDev.Net’s 20 October report. The improvement still left forest loss above the path needed to halt deforestation by 2030. These figures describe 2025, not forest loss measured in October 2026.

The assessment, prepared by civil-society and research organisations, tracks forest commitments made at the 2021 Glasgow climate summit. It compares annual loss with a 2018–2020 baseline averaging 8.3 million hectares a year. A reduction from the previous year therefore does not by itself establish that the 2030 commitment is on course.

The regional picture differed. The Congo Basin lost 2.4 million hectares in 2025, compared with 2.5 million hectares in Latin America, the report said. Declines in Latin America helped reduce the global total, while agriculture, logging and mining continued to put pressure on forests in the Congo Basin.

The findings concern deforestation, not a guarantee that forest degradation or climate risks have been resolved. This report relies on SciDev.Net’s original coverage; KROV has not independently audited the assessment’s underlying datasets.