This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Deforestation slowed worldwide last year, but the improvement is unlikely to last as the situation deteriorates in Central Africa and an exceptionally strong El Niño weather pattern intensifies, a new study said on Wednesday. Seven million hectares (17.3 million acres) of forest—roughly the size of the Republic of Ireland—were permanently destroyed in 2025, a 15% drop from the previous year, according to the annual Forest Declaration Assessment.
The slowdown, however, is not enough to keep the world from missing a pledge to end deforestation by 2030, according to the report, which was drafted by a coalition of research groups and nongovernmental organizations. The 2025 figure is "encouraging but so far it's the exception, not a new trajectory," Erin Matson, the study's co-author and lead consultant at advisory group Climate Focus, said in a media briefing. To meet the target, agreed at the United Nations' COP26 climate talks in 2021, deforestation would have to fall by around one million hectares (2.5 million acres) per year.
Clearing forests for agriculture or mining operations remains the leading driver of deforestation. Last year's improvement was due in part to progress in Latin America, with a 33% drop in what has historically been the world's deforestation "hot spot," according to the study. The authors pointed particularly to Brazil's deforestation action plan and increased enforcement in the country's Amazon.
Progress in the region, however, "rests heavily on the choices of a small number of governments and remains highly vulnerable" to recent and upcoming elections across the Amazon basin. Brazil's left-wing leader, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva—who has vowed to end illegal deforestation by 2030—faces right-wing populist Sen. Flavio Bolsonaro in a runoff presidential election on Oct. 25.
Deforestation had surged under the administration of Bolsonaro's father, far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro. Progress could also be threatened in Colombia and Peru, where hard-right presidents were recently elected, according to the experts. Across the Atlantic in Africa, the situation deteriorated in the Congo basin, where rainforest loss reached 2.4 million hectares (5.9 million acres)—near the same level of deforestation as the Amazon for the first time.
"Losing such a size of forest every year is a disaster," said Sam Nguiffo, a lawyer and founder of the Centre for Environment and Development in Cameroon. "As humanity, we clearly cannot afford that because it will be totally irreversible," he said. Logging for timber or felling trees for agriculture or mining appears to prevail in forest management in Central Africa, Nguiffo said.
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