Forests under fire: Tracking progress on 2030 forest goals

The 2024 Forest Declaration Assessment finds that the world is largely off track to meet its 2030 forest goals. In 2023, 6.37 million hectares of forest were permanently lost, exceeding the target required to eliminate deforestation by 45 percent. Tropical deforestation remains high, particularly in Asia, while primary forest loss is 38 percent higher than necessary to be on track. Forest degradation is widespread, with 62.6 million hectares losing ecological integrity in 2022. The report also highlights an escalation in forest fire frequency and intensity, with 138 million hectares of tree cover burned between 2001 and 2023. Restoration efforts are hindered by a lack of transparent monitoring, though tropical forest regrowth increased significantly after 2015. Biodiversity in forests is also under threat, with tree cover loss in forested Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) spiking by 10 percent in 2023.

• The world is off track to eliminate deforestation by 2030, with 6.37 million hectares of forest permanently lost in 2023, which is 45 percent higher than the 4.38 million hectare target needed to stay on track.
• Global emissions from deforestation totaled 3.8 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2023, representing a 4 percent increase from the 2018-20 baseline.
• Humid tropical primary forest loss in 2023 was 3.7 million hectares, leaving the world 38 percent off track to eliminate such loss by 2030.
• Forest degradation is extensive; in 2022, 62.6 million hectares of forest transitioned to a lower ecological integrity class, an area approximately ten times larger than the area deforested globally that year.
• Forest fires are increasing in scale and intensity, with over 138 million hectares of tree cover burned from 2001-23; nearly one-third of this total loss occurred in the last four years (2019-23), releasing nearly 13 billion metric tons of CO2-equivalent.
• The world is off track to protect biodiversity in forests, as tree cover loss in forested Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) spiked by 10 percent in 2023, totaling over 1.4 million hectares.
• Progress on restoring 30 percent of degraded landscapes by 2030 is difficult to track due to inconsistent monitoring, but project-level data suggests only about 4 million hectares of forest ecosystems are currently under restoration.
• Tropical moist forest regrowth increased sharply starting in 2015, totaling 11.34 million hectares globally in 2021, though this is often tied to previous deforestation and subsequent abandonment of land.
• In Brazil, while deforestation in the Amazon decreased by 62.2 percent in 2023 compared to 2022, the Cerrado biome saw a 67.7 percent increase in deforestation, totaling 1.11 million hectares.
• Mining, particularly for nickel in Indonesia to support electric vehicle batteries, is an emerging driver of deforestation; at least 75,000 hectares of forest loss occurred within Indonesia's nickel concessions from 2001-22.

APA

Forest Declaration Assessment (2024). Forests under fire: Tracking progress on 2030 forest goals. https://forestdeclaration.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/2024ForestDeclarationAssessment.pdf

Chicago

Forest Declaration Assessment. Forests under fire: Tracking progress on 2030 forest goals. 2024. https://forestdeclaration.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/2024ForestDeclarationAssessment.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Forest Declaration Assessment |title=Forests under fire: Tracking progress on 2030 forest goals |date=2024 |url=https://forestdeclaration.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/2024ForestDeclarationAssessment.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{forestdeclarationassessment2024forests, author = {{Forest Declaration Assessment}}, title = {{Forests under fire: Tracking progress on 2030 forest goals}}, institution = {Forest Declaration Assessment}, year = {2024}, url = {https://forestdeclaration.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/2024ForestDeclarationAssessment.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }