Destruction of the world's tropical forests eased in 2025 from a record high, a report showed on Wednesday, underscoring how decisive policy can help keep trees standing despite pressures from a warmer climate and expanding agricultural frontiers.
A new report from the World Resources Institute (WRI) showed that the planet lost 4.3 million hectares (10.6 million acres) of pristine tropical forest last year, a 36% drop compared to 2024, due largely to Brazil's efforts to curb deforestation as pledged by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva when he took office in 2023.
"It's encouraging, when the problem feels massive, (that) there are real interventions that work out there and we can see it in the data," said Elizabeth Goldman, a co-director of Global Forest Watch.
Still, Goldman said, countries are deforesting 70% more than they should be to meet the global commitment signed by almost all countries in 2023 to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030.
"Achieving this goal in the coming years will not be easy," she said.
The study found that Agricultural expansion continued to be the biggest driver of forest loss around the world, driven by farm commodities in nations such as Brazil, Bolivia and Indonesia, and subsistence farming in places such as the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Long-running policy continued to limit the loss of primary forests in Malaysia and Indonesia, where palm oil plantations have historically pressured biomes.
But President Prabowo Subianto's push to expand a food estate programme, which aims to make the country self-sufficient in food production, contributed to an increase in deforestation in Indonesia last year.
Environmental groups have warned that the end of an industry-wide agreement to bar the purchase of soybeans from recently deforested farms in the Amazon rainforest this year will have a similar impact in Brazil in coming years.
Global forest loss including ecosystems beyond the tropics fell 14% last year. But evidence continued to mount of climate change increasing pressure on the world's trees.
The report showed that the trend is most visible in Canada, which had its second-worst fire season on record last year.
The amount of boreal forest that burned in the past three years there was about five times the average recorded over the previous 20 years.
In the tropics, where fire ignition is usually human, drier leaves continued to turn what were once small burns into massive fires.
Rod Taylor, WRI's Global Director for Forests, said that although forests continue to be powerful carbon sinks helping to slow climate change, fires and droughts on a warming planet are increasingly turning these ecosystems into sources of greenhouse gas emissions.
"We're on a kind of knife's edge," he added.
As the Ukraine war is highlighted by some leaders during the United Nations' 81st General Assembly meetin...
The 81st UN General Assembly returns for its third day in New York on Thursday, with world leaders delivering high-level speeches and holding diplo...
Shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remained low on Thursday, as Iran reiterated that it will neither enter into new negotiations with th...
As the Ukraine war is highlighted by some leaders during the United Nations' 81st General Assembly meeting in New York, Russian forces attacked the Ukrainian capital Kyiv early on Thursday with ballistic missiles, killing two people and injuring six, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.
Shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remained low on Thursday, as Iran reiterated that it will neither enter into new negotiations with the United States nor re-open the Strait as long as its conditions are not met, despite recent indirect talks in New York mediated by Qatar.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in New York on Wednesday, as Washington pushes for an end to the war in Ukraine and Kyiv and Moscow continue to strike energy infrastructure.
U.S. President Donald Trump said his team held a three-hour meeting with an Iranian delegation in New York that he described as “very good” and “productive”, with another round of talks scheduled soon.
The 81st UN General Assembly continues in New York on Wednesday, with another day of high-level speeches and diplomatic meetings. The wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, global security and international cooperation remain at the centre of discussions.
Türkiye’s COP31 presidency has unveiled an action agenda designed to turn climate commitments into concrete projects and measurable results, focusing on clean energy, waste reduction, resilient cities and industrial decarbonisation.
Greenland and Antarctica have shed a combined 11.3 trillion tonnes of ice since 1979, according to the most comprehensive satellite study of the planet's ice sheets to date, with researchers warning the pace of loss has accelerated sharply in recent decades.
The European Union will continue allowing large-scale plastic waste exports to Türkiye despite concerns over recycling rates, environmental damage and the risk of illegal waste trafficking.
Hundreds of thousands of deep-diving turtles, known as olive ridley sea turtles, have arrived on Mexico’s southern coast for one of nature’s most striking nesting events. But conservation officials warn that climate change is making it increasingly difficult for their eggs to hatch.
August 2026 tied as the hottest month ever recorded globally, pushing average temperatures above the critical 1.5°C threshold as extreme weather swept across several regions, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said.
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