Global Deforestation Increased in 2023, Report Finds

Despite international pledges to limit and reverse deforestation by the end of this decade, the world is seeing an increase in deforestation, a new report has found.

The 2024 Forest Declaration Assessment report revealed that globally, deforestation increased in 2023, with 6.37 million hectares lost, including 1.4 million hectares lost in key biodiversity areas. The deforestation of 2023 led to 3.8 billion metric tons of carbon emissions. If deforestation emissions were represented as a country, they’d be the fourth biggest emitter behind China, the U.S. and India, the assessment said.

According to the assessment, this puts the world about 45% off track from reaching the goals set during COP26 in 2021. During that conference, more than 140 countries had pledged to stop and reverse global deforestation by 2030.

Further, more than 62 million hectares of forests saw a decline in ecological integrity, moving from a higher to a lower ecological integrity class. This equates to an area about two times larger than Germany, the report authors said.

There are several factors contributing to the increasing deforestation, the report noted. The biggest cause is agriculture, with 57% of deforestation in the past 20 years linked to agricultural commodities.

Another issue is the reliance on and pressure from fossil fuels, which reached record high levels last year, and the extraction of minerals for increasing renewable energy production. According to the report, fossil fuels still make up 80% of the world’s energy supply, and this number may only decline to around 73% by the end of the decade. 

More renewable energy production will be necessary to save forests from the impacts of climate change, but the authors warned that there needs to be circular methods for recovering and reusing minerals to avoid further forest destruction for mineral extraction.

Climate change and intensifying forest fires play another role in global deforestation. According to the report, more than 138 million hectares of tree covers burned from 2001 to 2023, and 30% of that tree cover loss happened in just the past four years.

The report highlighted the need for improved policies for forest conservation and better protections for communities that safeguard forests. In particular, the assessment noted that changing political leadership in places like Bolivia, Indonesia, and the U.S. could have wide-reaching impacts on global deforestation. 

Brazil served as one example of political influence on deforestation in the report. In September 2023, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon was down 66% compared to July 2022 under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who took office in early 2023.

“Thanks to the strong political resolve of the Brazilian government under the Lula administration, forest conservation is now a top priority after having been deprioritized by the previous administration — further underscoring that progress is not linear and depends strongly on political will,” the authors wrote.

But in Brazil and globally, far more work is needed to get the world back on track to meet the 2030 pledges.

“One year’s or even one decade’s reduction in deforestation does not imply that long-term goals have been achieved,” the report concluded. “Curbing deforestation and degradation is an ongoing effort, not a one-time achievement. Accelerated progress is possible — if governments, financial actors, and corporations step up to the challenge.”