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.
A Russian strike on a gas station in Kyiv has killed two people, the city's Mayor Vitali Klitschk...
Turkic states are considering the creation of a new law enforcement agency, TURKPOL, as members of the Organization of Turkic States (OTS) step up ...
Start your day informed with the AnewZ Daily Brief. Here are the top stories for the 11th of September, covering the latest developments about heal...
Four people were killed, including a child, in Ukrainian strikes on the Russian port city of Novorossiysk overnight, according to the governor of the Krasnodar region. Ukraine's drone forces commander, Robert Brovdi, said Russian military ships were destroyed in the attacks.
Overnight Iranian strikes on an air base in Jordan damaged multiple U.S. aircraft and left one without a wing, American media reported. Meanwhile, explosions were heard across parts of southern Iran according to local media reports.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) said on Wednesday they attacked two U.S. vessels and eight oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, calling the strikes a response to a U.S. attack on five Iranian tankers.
Ukrainian forces struck a Russian oil refinery in Siberia and a seaport in Dagestan in the past 24 hours, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. He will meet Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Thursday to discuss air defences for Ukraine over winter.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian arrived in New Delhi on Friday to attend the weekend BRICS summit, amid the ongoing U.S.-Iran conflict, joining a host of foreign dignitaries.
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.
Increasingly intense wildfires and heat waves are threatening global efforts to improve air quality and protect public health, the United Nations’ weather agency has warned.
Vast flocks of storks passed through Türkiye and the Bosporus this week as part of their annual autumn migration from European breeding grounds toward Africa and the Middle East.
China's coastal areas and southern regions are preparing for days of intense precipitation, with tens of thousands of people evacuated as Typhoon Narra tracks inland and another storm churns toward the country's eastern seaboard.
A wildfire in Croatia driven by strong winds descended on the tourist town of Omis overnight, engulfing houses, forcing about 1,000 people to evacuate to safety and injuring dozens, fire brigade and health officials said on Friday.
You can download the AnewZ application from Play Store and the App Store.
What is your opinion on this topic?
Leave the first comment