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A new report released by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations on July 22, 2024 has brought both relief and concern regarding the state of the world’s forests. While the rate of deforestation has slowed down globally, the report warns that the escalating impacts of climate change continue to pose a significant threat to these vital ecosystems.
The report, titled The State of the World’s Forests, provides a comprehensive analysis of forest conditions and trends. It highlighted a decline in deforestation rates compared to previous decades, with several countries showing significant improvements. However, the data also reveals a disturbing picture of the challenges forests face due to climate change.
In 2020, the global forest covered approximately 4.1 billion hectares (ha), or 31 per cent of the land area. The Russian Federation, Brazil, Canada, the United States of America, and China account for 54 per cent of the global forest area, in descending order.
Another 10 countries, including Australia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Peru and India, contribute about two-thirds of the global forest area.
The report estimated that between 1990 and 2020, approximately 420 million ha of forest were converted to land use. However, deforestation rates fell from 15.8 million ha per year between 1990 and 2002 to 10.2 million ha between 2015 and 2020.
Deforestation rates in Africa were 4.41 million ha, 2.95 million in South America and 2.24 million in Asia.
“Globally, the net rate of change in forest area, which is the difference between forest expansion and deforestation, is estimated at -4.7 million ha per year in 2010-2020. This was significantly lower than in the two previous decades (-7.8 million ha per year in 1990-2000 and -5.2 million ha per year in 2000-2010),” the report observed.
It also noted 10 countries recording annual gains in forest area in 2020, which include China, Australia, India, Chile, Viet Nam, Turkey, the United States of America, France, Italy and Romania.
The report also discovered that preliminary data from the Global Forest Resource Assessment (2025) show an 8.4 per cent decrease in deforestation in Indonesia for 2021-22 compared to 2020-21, the lowest since 1990. The overall reduction was recorded to be 90 per cent.
Brazil, too, registered 50 per cent decrease in deforestation in 2023 compared to 2022 in the Legal Amazon region that amounts to about 60 per cent of the total area of the country.
Africa also showed a decrease in annual deformation rates compared to 2016-19 and 2020-22 across subregions and the continent as a whole.
Regarding mangroves, it was noted that the global mangrove area was recorded to be 14.8 million ha, out of which South and Southeast Asia contributed almost 44 per cent of the total global area.
The rate of gross global mangrove loss decreased by 23 per cent between the two recent decades (2000-2010 and 2010-2020) and the rate of gain in mangrove area also decreased slightly, the report said.
Asia was the major contributor to mangrove loss and gains owing to aquaculture, natural retraction, conversion to oil-palm plantations, rice cultivation and other agriculture uses.
It said extreme weather events due to climate change and sea-level rise threaten mangroves and make the local communities vulnerable to disasters.
“Although the net change in mangrove area globally was negative between 2000 and 2020, the extent of natural expansion surpassed the area lost to natural causes by a substantial margin (63 per cent or 294,500 ha compared with 186,200 ha),” it noted.
The report observed the change as resilience of the mangroves.
But despite positive signs, it is estimated that about 340-370 million ha (equivalent to less than half the land area of Australia) of the earth’s land area is impacted by annual fire.
Satellite data estimated that about 383 million ha of land were affected by fire in 2023 alone. But the actual area is likely to exceed the number, as technical challenges could not detect small fires linked to temporal coverage and cloud cover.
It noted that the increasing intensity and frequency of wildfires are having impacts at local, national and global levels. For instance, the boreal fire in 2021 contributed to about 10 per cent of global carbon-dioxide emissions.
But the fires exacerbated the impact due to the extended drought in the region, increasing its severity and fuel consumption, accounting for almost one-quarter of total wildfire emissions.
It was noted that 6,868 fires burnt in Canada in 2023 smoked 14.6 million ha of land — five times more than 20 year average. Satellite data revealed that total fires in 2023 emitted 6,687 megatons of carbon dioxide globally.
These emissions were more than double the emissions contributed by the European Union by burning fossil fuels, generating 2.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.
The report also found that forests experience threats from pests. Noting an example of pine wood nematode, it said that forests in China, Japan and the Republic of Korea saw significant damage to native pine forests.
According to Korea Forest Service, 12 million pine trees were lost between 1988 and 2022. Insects and disease are estimated to cause losses exceeding 20 per cent of the host tree basal area over 25 million ha of forest land in the United States of America through 2027.
The report warned that monitoring of forest degradation and outbreaks of insect pests and disease is at an early stage across the world.
It found it challenging to quantify the economic cost in terms of timber loss, cost of tree replacement and the ecosystem services offered by trees and its socioeconomic value to local communities.
