Tropical forest loss eases in 2025 from record high, report shows
New Delhi: The destruction of the world’s tropical forests declined in 2025 from record high, highlighting how strong policy measures can help curb deforestation despite rising climate pressures and agricultural expansion, according to a new report on Wednesday.
Global loss of pristine tropical forests fell to 4.3 million hectares (10.6 million acres), marking a 36 per cent decrease compared to 2024. This improvement was largely driven by efforts in Brazil, where President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva intensified actions to reduce deforestation after taking 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, co-director of Global Forest Watch, which publishes the annual report in collaboration with the World Resources Institute and the University of Maryland.
Despite the progress, Goldman cautioned that global deforestation rates remain far above targets. Countries are still clearing forests at levels about 70 per cent higher than what is needed to meet the international pledge—agreed upon by most nations in 2023—to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030.
“Achieving this goal in the coming years will not be easy,” she said.
Policy Reversals
Agricultural expansion remained the leading cause of global forest loss, driven by large-scale farming of commodities in countries such as Brazil, Bolivia, and Indonesia, as well as subsistence agriculture in regions like the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Long-standing government policies have helped curb primary forest loss in Malaysia and Indonesia, where the expansion of palm oil plantations has historically put pressure on natural ecosystems.
However, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s push to expand a large-scale food estate program—aimed at achieving national food self-sufficiency—contributed to a rise in deforestation in the country over the past year.
Environmental groups have also warned that the expiration of an industry-wide agreement prohibiting the purchase of soybeans grown on recently deforested land in the Amazon rainforest could lead to increased forest clearing in Brazil in the years ahead.
Northern Forest at Risk
Global forest loss, including ecosystems beyond the tropics, declined by 14 per cent last year. However, growing evidence shows that climate change is placing increasing stress on forests worldwide.
This trend is particularly evident in Canada, which experienced its second-worst wildfire season on record last year.
Over the past three years, the area of boreal forest burned has been roughly five times higher than the average seen over the previous two decades.
In tropical regions, where most fires are caused by human activity, drier leaves have intensified the scale of damage, turning what were once smaller fires into widespread and more destructive blazes.
Rod Taylor, global director for forests at the World Resources Institute, noted that while forests remain vital carbon sinks that help slow climate change, increasing incidents of fires and drought are gradually transforming ecosystems into sources of greenhouse gas emissions as the planet continues to warm.
“We’re on a kind of knife’s edge,” he added.
(DD News)
