From 1990 and up until 2010, South America was the region in the world with the highest rate of forest loss, with an estimated 5.2 million hectares of net forest lost per year in the first decade of this century. Since then, the destruction of South American forests has slowed down to an average of 2.6 million hectares per year, the second largest forest loss rate in the world after Africa. The figures suggest that, despite reforestation efforts, forest areas in South America continue to be endangered by massive deforestation and wildfires.

In 2023, the deforested area in the Legal Amazon in Brazil amounted to approximately 802,300 hectares. Just a year earlier, the Amazon deforested area surpassed 1.2 million hectares. What is behind the growing Amazon deforestation in Brazil? Illegal logging, expansion of agricultural areas for soybean cultivation, and an increase in wildfire outbreaks are all among the leading causes of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Politics, however, has also played an important role. For example, the authorized budget for Brazil’s Ministry of the Environment has been on a mostly downward trend since 2013, when it reached a decade-long peak of nearly seven billion Brazilian reals. How big is the Brazilian deforestation issue? In 2023, Brazil registered by far the largest area of primary forest loss in the world, amounting to more than one million hectares. This was roughly the same area as the remaining top nine countries combined. As the country with the second-largest forest area worldwide, these developments are cause for concern amidst the conversation on climate change mitigation. With the global tree cover loss annually increasing, and the emission of greenhouse gases from forest areas along with it, reaching net-zero emissions targets by 2050 grows ever more challenging.

Network of 46 papers and 69 citation links related to "What causes deforestation and land cover change in Riau Province, Indonesia".

Network of 46 papers and 61 citation links related to "The mountain-lowland debate: Deforestation and sediment transport in the upper Ganga catchment".

The deforested area of the Brazilian Amazon declined by over 21 percent in 2023, when compared to the previous year. This was the second drop recorded in the last six years. The deforested area in the Brazilian Amazon stood at approximately nine thousand square kilometers in 2022.

The Canadian Environmental Sustainability Indicators (CESI) program provides data and information to track Canada's performance on key environmental sustainability issues. The Forest management and disturbances indicator includes information on the management of Canadian forests, disturbances to Canadian forests, and planting and seeding of trees in Canada. Specific measures included in this indicator look at the annual timber harvest, number of forest fires, areas burned by forest fires, defoliation by insects, deforestation, and seeding and planting. Information is provided to Canadians in a number of formats including: charts and graphs, HTML and CSV data tables, and downloadable reports. See the supplementary documentation for the data sources and details on how the data were collected and how the indicator was calculated. Canadian Environmental Sustainability Indicators: https://www.canada.ca/environmental-indicators

Network of 45 papers and 68 citation links related to "Combined climate and carbon-cycle effects of large-scale deforestation".

Network of 42 papers and 72 citation links related to "Deforestation and child diet diversity: A geospatial analysis of 15 Sub-Saharan African countries".

Deforestation led to an annual loss of *** million hectares of forest in Africa between 2015 and 2020. The conversion of forest to other land uses affected mostly the eastern and southern areas of the continent, at a deforestation rate of *** million hectares per year. In Western and Central Africa, around *** million hectares of forest were lost per year in the same period. Despite a small reduction observed in the period 2015-2020, the continental deforestation rate has overall increased since 1990. From that year until 2020, Africa has seen the greatest loss in forest area more than any region of the world.

Forest area (% of land area) in India was reported at 24.45 % in 2022, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. India - Forest area (% of land area) - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on July of 2025.