• Tropical forests are regenerating across millions of hectares, with Latin America and Asia showing dramatic gains—but this apparent recovery conceals a deeper contradiction: deforestation remains stubbornly high.
• The world continues to clear about 8 million hectares of forest each year, far off the path to meet the 2030 zero-deforestation pledge, as fires, drought, and agriculture erase progress almost as quickly as it appears.
• Primary forests, rich in carbon and biodiversity, are disappearing fastest, driven mainly by agriculture; current funding for forest protection is dwarfed by subsidies for industrial farming.
• Natural regrowth offers hope—young secondary forests sequester carbon efficiently—but without halting new clearings, these green shoots risk becoming temporary pauses in an ongoing cycle of loss.

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