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.
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Global investors managing more than $3 trillion in assets have urged governments to halt and reverse deforestation and ecosystem destruction by 2030, according to a joint statement released on Monday ahead of next month’s U.N. climate conference in Brazil.
The world is falling far behind a global goal to reverse deforestation by 2030, with losses being largely driven by agricultural expansion and forest fires, according to the 2025 Forest Declaration Assessment.
European forests are absorbing significantly less carbon dioxide than a decade ago, putting the European Union’s ambitious climate goals in jeopardy, scientists from the EU’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) warned on Wednesday.
A group of 11 European Union countries is pressuring the European Commission to delay and soften the bloc’s landmark deforestation law, warning that current requirements are too burdensome for farmers and foresters, according to a document seen by Reuters.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's Civil Contract party has won the Armenian elections, picking up nearly half the vote. With a majority in parliament, Pashinyan is set for a third term as Prime Minister. But an opposition politican has said he will challenge the election results.
Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry says 19 citizens have been repatriated following a deadly drone attack on two cargo ships in the Sea of Azov on 5 June.
A Sudanese man has been arrested over a knife attack in Belfast that left a man seriously injured and prompted calls online for a protest after footage of the incident circulated widely on social media.
Barcelona is preparing to mark a historic milestone in the legacy of architect Antoni Gaudí as Pope Leo XIV visits the city this week to inaugurate the Tower of Jesus Christ at the Sagrada Família basilica, almost exactly 100 years after the visionary architect’s death.
Iran and Israel have halted strikes on each other, but Tehran has warned it will recommence attacks if Israel continues military action in Lebanon. U.S. President Donald Trump and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun have meanwhile made pleas for peace.
France’s parliament has formally recognised state responsibility for the use of the toxic pesticide chlordecone in Martinique and Guadeloupe, marking a significant step in addressing decades of environmental contamination and public health concerns.
Financial markets are significantly underestimating the economic impact of biodiversity loss, potentially leaving countries exposed to sovereign debt crises and rising borrowing costs, according to new research published on Friday.
Wildlife researchers have identified dozens of previously unknown insect species during an expedition to Angola’s remote Lisima Plateau, a conservation group announced on Wednesday.
Global weather forecasters predict a strong El Niño will develop in the second half of 2026, bringing hotter, drier conditions to much of Asia while increasing rainfall in parts of North and South America.
Google has asked U.S. regulators for permission to release up to 32 million sterilised mosquitoes in California and Florida as part of its experimental “Debug” programme aimed at reducing populations of disease-carrying insects.
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