Global deforestation drops 15% in a year – the biggest fall on record

The world lost just over 7 million hectares of forest to deforestation in 2025. That is still a vast area – but it is the best figure in years: 15% lower than in 2024, the sharpest year-on-year drop since the 2018-2020 baseline. The numbers come from the Forest Declaration Assessment 2026, the independent report that checks every year whether countries are keeping their promise to halt forest loss by 2030.

Tap Next to walk through the data step by step.

What changed

For five years after more than 140 countries signed the Glasgow pledge in 2021, deforestation barely moved. 2025 breaks that flat line. According to the report, the fall is driven mainly by specific policy decisions in specific countries – Brazil above all – and by tougher enforcement on the ground.

The regional picture could hardly be more different. Tropical Latin America cut deforestation by 33% against 2018-2020. Asia is down 12% and non-tropical regions 13%. Africa, however, is still rising, pushed by smallholder farming and new infrastructure.

What’s left to do

The report is blunt: the world is still 70% off track for zero deforestation by 2030. Since 2021, 10.7 million hectares more have been lost than the pathway allowed – an area larger than Iceland.

It also warns that much of the progress rests on decisions that could be reversed. So 2025 is less a happy ending than a proof of concept: when political will and enforcement pull in the same direction, forests bounce back fast.

How we made this chart: the figures are taken unrounded from table S.1 of the report’s supplementary material. The «pathway to zero» is the straight line the report itself uses as its benchmark: from the 2018-2020 average to zero in 2030.