2. Forest extent and change
Information on forest area and the way it changes over time is essential for measuring progress towards jointly agreed goals and targets, including the SDGs. Forests feature in the SDGs because of their significant contributions to many ecosystem services.
Changes in forest area over time reflect changes in the demand for land for forestry and other land uses but, on its own, this parameter is insufficient to describe and explain complex land-use dynamics. Additional information is needed to understand how much forest has been lost due to conversion to other land uses and how much has been gained due to natural expansion and afforestation. This chapter provides insight into such dynamics, presenting estimates of both deforestation and forest area net change at the regional and global levels (Box 3). It also provides data on two non-forest categories, “other wooded land” (OWL) and “other land with tree cover” (see FAO, 2023b, for definitions of these and other terms used in this publication), both of which are important resources in many countries.
Deforestation is the conversion of forest to other land uses, such as agriculture and infrastructure; thus, deforestation decreases forest area. Forest area can also increase when trees are planted on land that previously was not forested (“afforestation”) and when forest expands through natural succession on land that was under a different land use (“natural forest expansion”).
Forest area net change is calculated as the difference between the area that is deforested in a given period and the area of forest expansion. Depending on whether forest expansion or deforestation accounts for the larger area, forest area net change can be positive, meaning there was an overall gain in forest area over the period, or negative, meaning there was an overall loss of forest area.
Thus, forest area net change and deforestation are not necessarily the same. Forest area net change is the result of all losses and gains and deforestation takes into account only the area of forest that has been converted to other land uses. For the Global Forest Resources Assessment 2025, net change in forest area has been calculated as the difference in forest area between two points in time.
FRA 2025 received data on (or, for desk studies, made estimates of, based on available information) forest area in 2025 for the 236 countries and areas included in the assessment.
The global forest area in 2025 is estimated at 4.14 billion ha, which is 32 percent of the total land area. This area is equivalent to 0.50 ha of forest per capita,6 although forests are not distributed equally among the world’s people or geographically. Forty-five percent of the world’s forests are in the tropical domain, followed by the boreal (28 percent), temperate (17 percent) and subtropical (11 percent) domains (Figure 2). Table 2 shows the distribution of forest area at the regional and subregional levels. Europe accounts for 25 percent of the world’s forest area, followed by South America (20 percent), North and Central America (19 percent), Africa (16 percent), Asia (15 percent) and Oceania (4 percent). Figure 3 shows the forest area as a percentage of total land area by region and Figure 4 shows this by countries and areas.
Note: Refer to the disclaimer on page ii for the names and boundaries used in this map. The percentages in the legend indicate the proportion of total forest area in each climatic domain.
Sources: Bourgoin, C., Ameztoy, I., Verhegghen, A., Desclée, B., Carboni, S., Bastin, J., Beuchle, R., et al. 2024. Mapping global forest cover of the year 2020 to support the EU regulation on deforestation-free supply chains. JRC136960. Luxembourg, Publications Office of the European Union and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2760/262532. FAO. 2012. Global ecological zones for FAO forest reporting: 2010 update. Rome. https://openknowledge.fao.org/handle/20.500.14283/ap861e
More than half (54 percent) of the world’s forest area is in only five countries (in descending order, by forest area) – the Russian Federation, Brazil, Canada, the United States of America and China (these are also the world’s five largest countries in terms of land area, although not in the same order7). The ten countries with the largest forest area account for about two-thirds (66 percent) of the world total (Table 3). Seven countries and areas – the Falkland Islands (Malvinas),8 Gibraltar, Holy See, Monaco, Nauru, Svalbard and Jan Mayen Islands, and Tokelau – reported having no forest at all, and forest accounts for less than 10 percent of the total land area in another 49 countries and areas. Table 4 shows the top ten countries and areas for forest area as a percentage of total land area; among those, the value is 90 percent or above in seven.
For this report, forest-area trends were analysed over a 35-year period in three blocks: 1990–2000, 2000–2015 and 2015–2025. Forest-area estimates were available for six FRA reporting years (i.e. 1990, 2000, 2010, 2015, 2020 and 2025) for all 236 countries and areas (Table 5 shows values for these years by region/subregion). The rate of net forest loss decreased globally from 10.7 million ha per year between 1990–2000 to 3.68 million ha per year in 2000–2015 due mainly to large increases in forest area in Canada, China, the Russian Federation and the United States of America. The annual rate of net forest loss increased in the period 2015–2025, to 4.12 million ha, due to a reduction in the rate of forest gain (i.e. afforestation and natural forest expansion). In China, for example, the net forest gain declined from 2.22 million ha per year in 2000–2015 to 1.69 million ha per year in 2015–2025; in Canada, net forest gain fell from 513 000 ha per year in 2000–2015 to 82 500 ha per year in 2015–2025. In the United States of America, a net forest gain of 437 000 ha per year in 2000–2015 became a net forest loss of 120 000 ha per year in the most recent decade. Figure 5 shows the annual forest area net change by country and area in the period 1990–2025.
Note: Refer to the disclaimer on page ii for the names and boundaries used in this map. Dotted line represents approximately the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir agreed upon by India and Pakistan. The final status of Jammu and Kashmir has not yet been agreed upon by the parties. Final boundary between the Republic of Sudan and the Republic of South Sudan has not yet been determined. Final status of the Abyei area is not yet determined.
Note: Refer to the disclaimer on page ii for the names and boundaries used in this map. Dotted line represents approximately the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir agreed upon by India and Pakistan. The final status of Jammu and Kashmir has not yet been agreed upon by the parties. Final boundary between the Republic of Sudan and the Republic of South Sudan has not yet been determined. Final status of the Abyei area is not yet determined.
Among the regions (Table 6; Figure 6), South America had the highest annual rate of net forest loss in 2015–2025, at 4.10 million ha, down slightly from the rate in 2000–2015 (4.36 million ha per year) and substantially lower than in 1990–2000 (7.34 million ha per year). All countries in South America reported decreases in forest area since 1990 except Chile and Uruguay, where forest area increased by 1.35 million ha and 1.14 million ha, respectively, between 1990 and 2025 (although Chile reported a decrease in forest area between 2015 and 2025 at a rate of 5 520 ha per year). Brazil indicated a significant reduction in the rate of net forest loss, from 5.77 million ha in 1990–2000 to 3.01 million ha in 2000–2015 and 2.94 million ha in 2015–2025. All countries in the region that reported decreases in forest area since 1990 reported reduced rates of net loss in 2015–2025 compared with 1990–2000, with the exceptions of Guyana and Suriname. In Guyana, the rate of net forest area loss more than doubled, from 3 790 ha per year in 1990–2000 to 8 420 ha per year in 2015–2025. Suriname reported a net increase in forest area of 5 370 ha per year in 1990–2000 and a net loss of forest area of 16 400 ha per year in 2015–2025.
The second-highest net loss of forest area in 2015–2025 was in Africa, with Eastern and Southern Africa and Western and Central Africa accounting for most of it. Annual net loss in Africa was 3.28 million ha in 1990–2000, 3.63 million ha in 2000–2015 and 2.96 million ha per year in 2015–2025. The reduction in net forest loss in Africa in the most recent decade was due mainly to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where net forest loss fell by about 0.5 million ha per year in 2015–2025 compared with 2000–2015.
Forest area decreased in North and Central America by 336 000 ha per year in 1990–2000, increased by 714 000 ha per year in 2000–2015, and decreased again in 2015–2025, by 260 000 ha per year. The United States of America reported a net forest gain of 430 000 ha per year in 2000–2015 and a net loss of 120 000 ha per year in 2015–2025. Canada reported a slowing of the annual net increase in forest area from 513 000 ha in 2000–2015 to 82 500 ha in the most recent decade.
In the Caribbean, forest area increased by 55 500 ha per year in 1990–2000, 64 200 ha per year in 2000–2015 and 14 200 ha per year in 2015–2025.
Of the regions, Asia had the highest net annual gain in forest area in 2015–2025, at 1.62 million ha. Nevertheless, this was substantially lower than the net annual gain in the region in 2000–2015, at 2.40 million ha. Of the Asian subregions, only South and Southeast Asia recorded a net forest loss in 2015–2025. Even in that subregion, however, the loss was only about one-tenth of that recorded in 1990–2000. This can be attributed mainly to Indonesia, which experienced a net loss of 2.44 million ha per year in 1990–2000 but a net gain of 94 100 ha in the most recent decade.
In Western and Central Asia, the annual net gain in forest area almost doubled between 1990–2000 and 2015–2025, from 92 500 ha to 181 000 ha.
There was an overall net gain in forest area in Europe, with the annual rate increasing from 820 000 ha in 1990–2000 to 1.24 million ha in 2000–2015 and 1.44 million ha in 2015–2025. The increase was due mainly to changes in forest area reported by the Russian Federation, where the net forest-area gain increased from 80 400 ha per year in 1990–2000 to 71 000 ha per year in 2000–2015 and 942 000 ha per year in 2015–2025.
The net forest-area gain in Oceania of 140 000 ha per year in 2015–2025 reversed the region’s negative trend of previous decades. This mainly reflects changes reported by Australia, where there were annual net forest losses of 167 000 ha in 1990–2000 and 26 700 ha in 2000–2015 but an annual net gain of 105 000 ha in 2015–2025. A net increase in forest area reported by New Zealand and a reduced rate of net forest loss reported by Papua New Guinea also contributed to the trend.
Table 7 shows the top ten countries worldwide for average annual net loss of forest area between 2015 and 2025. Table 8 shows the top ten countries for average annual net gain in forest area in the same period.
Because information on forest area net change is insufficient to describe the complexity of land-use dynamics, countries were asked to provide estimates of forest expansion (afforestation and natural forest expansion) and deforestation for FRA 2025. The collected data enabled an estimation of the deforestation rate at the regional and global levels and by climatic domain in 1990–2025.
An estimated 489 million ha of forest was lost through deforestation between 1990 and 2025, although the rate slowed over the period. The annual rate of deforestation was 17.6 million ha in 1990–2000, 13.6 million ha in 2000–2015 and 10.9 million ha in 2015–2025 (Figure 7).
Most deforestation (88 percent) between 1990 and 2025 occurred in the tropical domain, although the annual rate of deforestation there decreased from 15.9 million ha in 1990–2000, to 11.9 million ha in 2000–2015, to 9.42 million ha in 2015–2025 (Table 9). The annual rate of deforestation decreased in the subtropical domain, from 1.09 million ha in 1990–2000 to 0.73 million ha in 2015–2025, but increased slightly in the temperate and boreal domains.
South America had the highest annual deforestation rate in 2015–2025, at 4.22 million ha, a drop of nearly 50 percent from the rate in the region in 1990–2000 (8.24 million ha) (Table 10). In Africa, the deforestation rate of 4.08 million ha in 2000–2015 (mainly reflecting trends in Eastern and Southern Africa and Western and Central Africa) declined to 3.45 million ha per year in 2015–2025. Africa and Europe were the only regions in which the deforestation rate increased between 1990–2000 and 2000–2015 (from 3.62 million ha per year to 4.08 million ha per year in Africa and from 126 000 ha per year to 160 000 ha per year in Europe), although the rates in both regions decreased in 2015–2025 (to 3.45 million ha per year in Africa and 145 000 ha per year in Europe).
Although the reporting on deforestation, afforestation and natural forest expansion in FRA 2025 has improved compared with previous assessments, major gaps and deficiencies remain because many countries and areas do not collect data on these parameters. Therefore, estimates of forest-area change dynamics in FRA 2025 should be viewed with caution.
The category “other land with tree cover” comprises areas found in rural landscapes and urban settings that meet the thresholds for tree cover established by FAO’s forest definition but for which the land use is not forest (and therefore the land does not meet FAO’s forest definition). This category is reported because of its importance in the provision of goods and services. It has four subcategories: (1) trees in urban settings; (2) tree orchards; (3) palms; and (4) agroforestry.
Table 11 shows estimated areas in each of these subcategories, by region and subregion. Not all countries and areas reported on all four subcategories, and the overall reporting coverage is quite low. Therefore, the estimates presented here should be viewed with caution.
Ninety-one countries and areas reported a total land area subject to agroforestry of 55.4 million ha in 2025. The majority (39.3 million ha) of this area is in Asia, mostly South and Southeast Asia, with India and Indonesia accounting for almost 100 percent of the regional total and for 70 percent of the global total.
Overall, there is an estimated 12.8 million ha of palms globally, as reported by 125 countries and areas. Of the regions, the largest area (8.10 million ha) is in Asia, mostly South and Southeast Asia, with Malaysia and Thailand accounting for 87 percent of the regional total and for 55 percent of the global total.
One-hundred and eleven countries and areas reported a total area of tree orchards of 32.1 million ha, mostly in Asia (12.1 million ha), Europe (8.44 million ha) and Africa (7.32 million ha).
Sixty-one countries and areas reported on trees in urban settings, with a total of 26.9 million ha, of which more than 70 percent (19.5 million ha) is in North and Central America.
Figure 8 shows, at the global level, trends in the area of other land with tree cover between 1990 and 2025.
The trend data presented here are based on those countries that reported complete time series for individual categories. Therefore, the regional aggregates are lower than those presented above.
Sixty-seven countries and areas reported trend data for agroforestry, with the area of land subject to this land use increasing by 5.27 million ha between 1990 and 2025; there were increases in all regions except North and Central America and Africa, where the area decreased, and Oceania, where there was little change. Globally, the biggest increase in the area of agroforestry was in 1990–2000, mainly in South and Southeast Asia, with Indonesia reporting an agroforestry area of 22.0 million ha in 1990 and 25.7 million ha in 2000.
The analysis of trends for palms was based on data reported by 111 countries and areas. The area of palms more than doubled between 1990 and 2025, increasing at an average of 153 000 ha per year over the period. The increases occurred in all regions, although Asia accounted for more than 80 percent of the global increase.
Eighty-five countries and areas reported on trends in tree-orchard area, which increased globally by 8.08 million ha between 1990 and 2025. Asia contributed a large part of this, with China reporting that its area of tree orchards more than doubled between 1990 and 2000 before stabilizing thereafter. The area also increased in Africa and South America, but it decreased in Europe, North and Central America, and Oceania.
Forty-nine countries reported on the area of trees in urban settings for FRA 2025. Globally, the area increased by 8.94 million ha between 1990 and 2025 at a rate of 255 000 ha per year. Increases were observed in all regions except Oceania, where the area was steady over the period. The largest increase was in North and Central America, due mainly to the United States of America.
FRA 2025 received information on the area of OWL in 2025 from all 236 countries and areas. The area of OWL worldwide is estimated at 1.09 billion ha, which is 8 percent of the total land area (Table 12). Africa has the largest area of OWL (482 million ha), followed by Asia (181 million ha), South America (175 million ha), Europe (125 million ha), North and Central America (85.0 million ha) and Oceania (43.5 million ha). Table 13 shows the top ten countries for OWL, five of which (Australia, Brazil, China, Peru and the Russian Federation) are also in the top ten for forest area.
Worldwide, the area of OWL decreased by 23.5 million ha between 1990 and 2025. The rate of decline averaged 1.71 million ha per year in 1990–2000 and 1.39 million ha per year in 2015–2025 (Table 14). An annual increase of 496 000 ha was registered in 2000–2015, due mainly to data reported by the Russian Federation; this can mostly be attributed to a change in the data-collection methodology rather than to an actual increase in the area of OWL.
In South America, the rate of decrease in the area of OWL slowed significantly in 2015–2025, due mainly to an increase reported by Colombia and to a reduced loss reported by Brazil. There were large declines in OWL in the two subregions of Western and Central Africa and Eastern and Southern Africa between 1990 and 2025, driven mainly by losses in Chad (Western and Central Africa) and Madagascar (Eastern and Southern Africa). Conversely, there were slight gains in OWL in Northern Africa over the period.
Trends in the area of OWL should be viewed with caution because many countries face challenges in monitoring this parameter, largely associated with difficulties in measuring tree-canopy cover in the range of 5–10 percent. Therefore, reliable data on the area of OWL are often lacking.
