- ➔ Recent data indicate a significant reduction in deforestation in some countries. For example, deforestation is estimated to have declined by 8.4 percent in Indonesia in 2021–2022 and by 50 percent in Brazil’s Legal Amazon in 2023. The rate of gross global mangrove loss decreased by 23 percent between the periods 2000–2010 and 2010–2020.
- ➔ Climate change is making forests more vulnerable to abiotic and biotic stressors such as wildfire and pests. Wildfire intensity and frequency are increasing. Boreal forests accounted for nearly one-quarter of carbon-dioxide emissions due to wildfire in 2021. Fires emitted an estimated 6 687 megatonnes of carbon dioxide globally in 2023, which was more than double the carbon-dioxide emissions by the European Union due to the burning of fossil fuels in that year. In the United States of America, 25 million ha of forestlands are projected to experience losses exceeding 20 percent of host tree basal area due to insects and disease through to 2027.
- ➔ Global wood production is at record levels, at about 4 billion m3 per year. An estimated 2.04 billion m3 of industrial roundwood was harvested in 2022, which was similar to the volume in 2021. About 1.97 billion m3 was harvested in 2022 for woodfuel, constituting just under half (49.4 percent) of the total wood harvest; the proportion was much higher in Africa, at 90 percent.
- ➔ Nearly 6 billion people use non-timber forest products, including 2.77 billion rural users in the Global South. Data are now available on the international trade of pine nuts and forest mushrooms and truffles: combined, global exports of these products was worth about USD 1.8 billion in 2022.
- ➔ Projections to 2050 indicate significant increases in wood demand, albeit in a wide band. Global roundwood demand could increase by as much as 49 percent (between 2020 and 2050), driven mainly by demand for industrial roundwood, although this projection is subject to considerable uncertainty. Wood-use efficiency increased by 15 percent between 1961 and 2022.
- ➔ Given rapidly changing environmental conditions and rising demands on forests, more innovation is needed in the forest sector. Three imperatives will drive such innovation: (1) escalating stressors, including climate change, which will require new forest and land management approaches; (2) the shift towards a bioeconomy in which wood will be a major input; and (3) the opportunities offered by the vast range of non-wood forest products for potentially billions of smallholders.
This chapter presents recent data on forest resources and the production of wood products and non-wood forest products (NWFPs)d and offers projections on future wood demand.e Given the increasing impacts of stressors such as fire and pests on forests, and the multiple roles that forests can play as solutions to global challenges, the chapter discusses the need for innovative approaches to forest conservation, restoration and sustainable use.
2.1 Recent data indicate a significant reduction in deforestation in some countries
Forests covered about 4.1 billion ha (31 percent) of the world’s land surface in 2020.18 The largest part is in the tropics, followed by the boreal, temperate and subtropical climatic domains. More than half (54 percent) of the world’s forests is in only five countries – the Russian Federation, Brazil, Canada, the United States of America and China (in descending order, by area). Ten countries account for two-thirds of the global forest area, also including Australia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia, Peru and India (in descending order).
An estimated 420 million ha of forests was converted to other land uses between 1990 and 2020.18 The rate of deforestation declined over the period, from 15.8 million ha per year in 1990–2000 to 10.2 million ha per year in 2015–2020. The annual rates of deforestation in 2015–2020 were 4.41 million ha in Africa, 2.95 million ha in South America and 2.24 million ha in Asia. The FRA 2020 Remote Sensing Survey (RSS) confirmed the declining trend in global deforestation.16
Change in forest area over time is due to two factors: deforestation, and the expansion of forests in areas previously under other land uses. Globally, the net rate of change in forest area, which is the difference between forest expansion and deforestation, is estimated at –4.7 million ha per year in 2010–2020. This was significantly lower than in the two previous decades (–7.8 million ha per year in 1990–2000 and –5.2 million ha per year in 2000–2010). Table 1 shows the top ten countries for annual net gain in forest area in the decade to 2020.
TABLE 1TOP TEN COUNTRIES FOR AVERAGE ANNUAL NET GAIN IN FOREST AREA, 2010–2020
Preliminary data collected for FRA 2025 indicate a significant reduction in the rate of forest-area loss for some countries that previously ranked among the top ten for this parameter. An initial review of data for Indonesia for 2021–2022 indicated a notable 8.4 percent decrease in deforestation compared with 2020–2021. This is the lowest recorded deforestation rate in Indonesia since the Ministry of Environment and Forestry began tracking annual rates in 1990; overall, the rate decreased by nearly 90 percent over the period.19, 20 Brazil achieved an extraordinary 50 percent reduction in deforestation in 2023 (compared with 2022) in the Legal Amazon,f which constitutes approximately 60 percent of the country’s total area.22
The latest data on deforestation on the African continent supports the finding of the RSS,g indicating a decreasing rate of deforestation. According to statistics derived using the Global Map of Forest Cover Changes and their Drivers generated by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, the annual rate of deforestation in Africa decreased between 2016–2019 and 2020–2022 in all subregions and on the continent as a whole.23 These results should be interpreted with care, however, subject to the country-reported figures to be published in FRA 2025.
Mangroves
Mangrove forests provide hundreds of millions of coastal people with important ecosystem services, sustain a rich food web, and provide regulating services such as coastal stabilization, nutrient absorption and carbon sequestration. In 2023, FAO published the results of a survey of the area of mangroves globally and regionally and analysed changes between 2000 and 2020 with the aim of further understanding the drivers of change and how the relative importance of these might have shifted over time.24 The study used a methodology that combined remote sensing and local knowledge to estimate mangrove area and change, focusing on land use rather than land cover; it was the first global mangrove study of its kind.
The study estimated the global mangrove area in 2020 at 14.8 million ha, with South and Southeast Asia accounting for nearly 44 percent of the global total. There was a net decline of 284 000 ha in mangrove area globally between 2000 and 2020, which was an overall reduction of about 1.9 percent. The rate of gross global mangrove loss decreased by 23 percent between the two recent decades (i.e. 2000–2010 and 2010–2020), and the rate of gain in mangrove area also decreased slightly. Asia accounted for most of the mangrove losses and gains. The main drivers of mangrove loss between 2000 and 2020 were aquaculture development and natural retraction,h followed by conversion to oil-palm plantations, rice cultivation and other forms of agriculture. Note that the data and methods used in the study did not allow the separation of different aquaculture practices, and the class “aquaculture” was therefore used as a catch-all term, although mangrove loss was associated primarily with pond shrimp aquaculture and, in some rare cases, pond-farmed fin fish. Thus, most aquaculture practices do not affect mangroves.
The study highlighted the importance of natural retraction as a driver of mangrove loss. Impacts of climate change such as sea-level rise and extreme weather events threaten mangroves and increase the vulnerability of local communities to disasters. Although the net change in mangrove area globally was negative between 2000 and 2020, the extent of natural expansion surpassed the area lost to natural causesi by a substantial margin (63 percent – 294 500 ha compared with 186 200 ha). This unexpected finding demonstrates the resilience of mangroves in adapting to environmental changes and colonizing suitable habitats. The study shows the need to address land-use drivers of mangrove loss, particularly in Southeast Asia and Western and Central Africa, the two subregions with the largest gross loss of mangrove area over the period studied.
FAO continues to improve its processes for forest resource assessments (Box 3). More updated data on deforestation and other forest attributes will be available in 2025, when the next FRA will be published.
Box 3Enhancing processes for data collection and dissemination for the Global Forest Resources Assessment
A range of innovative tools and platforms is changing the way in which land and forest data are collected, analysed and disseminated, including for the Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA).* As part of the FRA 2020 Remote Sensing Survey, FAO trained more than 800 national experts from 126 countries and collected data at 400 000 locations. In 2018, FAO developed the FRA Platform25 to reduce the reporting burden on countries, increase the consistency of reported data, and facilitate interactions among collaborators during data collection and analysis. This has the additional benefit of helping improve the dissemination and use of FRA data and other information, including to the public.
The introduction of the FRA Platform has made the data-collection process fully digital. It enables automated cross-checks between reporting tables for consistency, the documentation of the reporting process for institutional memory, the sharing of access to geospatial data and products to support reporting, and the easy downloading of data for further analysis.
For FRA 2025, stronger metadata support is enabling the better documentation of reported figures and underlying data-collection and analysis systems. Enhanced cross-checks and interoperability with previous submissions and reporting cycles via the FRA Platform will also help avoid inconsistencies resulting from human error, reduce the reporting burden and cost on countries, and enable a transition to a flexible reporting process in which countries can update their reports with new data within the five-year reporting cycles.
* See FAO. n.d. Global Forest Resources Assessments. In: FAO. https://www.fao.org/forest-resources-assessment/en/
