Global deforestation hasn’t slowed in any significant way in the four years since 127 countries pledged to halt and reverse forest loss and degradation by 2030. The newly published 2025 Forest Declaration Assessment shows that nations are 63% off track from meeting their zero-deforestation target.
To be on track for that goal, deforestation was supposed to drop by 10% every year, capping out at 5 million hectares (12.4 million acres) worldwide in 2024. However, roughly 8.1 million hectares (20 million acres) were cleared globally that year, a negligible change from the 2018–2020 baseline of 8.3 million hectares (20.5 million acres), the report found.
“Every year, the gap between commitments and reality grows wider,” Erin Matson, the assessment’s lead author and a consultant for Netherlands-based research think tank Climate Focus, said in a statement. “Forests are non-negotiable infrastructure for a livable planet.”
By the end of 2025, the target is for no more than 4.1 million hectares (10.1 million acres), meaning that to get back on track, the global deforestation rate would need to fall by half in a year.
Mid-year estimates show that’s unlikely. Data from Brazil’s space institute, INPE, show there were deforestation alerts issued for 209,000 hectares (about 516,500 acres) in the Amazon Rainforest between January and June 2025, 27% higher than in 2024. However, analysts expect the rate to slow as Brazil implements antideforestation policies, ranging from cattle tracking to creating protected areas.
According to the report, the target for primary forest loss is even further off track, missed by 190% in 2024. The rate of deforestation has almost doubled since the 2018-2020 baseline. Much of that deforestation was driven by fires in the Amazon Basin, the result of a strong El Niño and historic drought conditions in the region.
The assessment found that financing for forest protection and restoration also fell short. Public financing reached an average of $5.9 billion per year, far below the estimated $117 billion to $299 billion needed to achieve zero deforestation by 2030. Over the same period, large-scale industrial agriculture received an estimated $409 billion in annual subsidies.
The stakes are high for the upcoming U.N. climate summit in Belém in the Brazilian Amazon. Nations need to move from commitments to concrete action, Matson said in a video press call.
“What happens in the next five years will have a huge impact on the livability of our planet,” she said. “We need global leaders to make forest protection nonnegotiable because our collective prosperity and well-being depend on it.”
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