According to The Forest Declaration Assessment 2026, deforestation fell 15% in 2025, marking the sharpest drop since the beginning of the decade. However, it warns that the world is still 70% off track from halting deforestation by 2030.
The Forest Declaration Assessment Partners report a cumulative deficit in progress – since 2021, this deficit has reached 10.7 million hectares of deforestation, which is nearly equivalent to the land area of Iceland.
The report’s analysis of the somewhat flat trajectory of deforestation in the past few years shows the level of progress made in 2025 is so far the exception to a plateaued trend.
Alongside deforestation, the report also talks through a less commonly used term, but one they deem increasingly important as it precedes total loss – forest degradation.
Although the definition of forest degradation remains debated (which makes the monitoring of degradation difficult), as part of the reporting process for the 2025 Forest Resources Assessment, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations evaluated the existence and characteristics of national definitions of forest degradation.
Not only is the acceptance of the term a step forwards in policymaking, but the willingness to evaluate national characteristics creates an opportunity to not only tackle deforestation, but also its equally evil little brother, degradation.
In terms of cause behind forest loss, commodity production remains the leading driver of deforestation, ecosystem conversion and forest degradation worldwide. According to the report, current levels are still far above the pathway to zero by 2030.
Companies are beginning to take responsibility for their impacts within this – by June 2026, 461 companies had set SBTi FLAG targets and the pace of target-setting and validation doubled in 2025.
However, it is said that few companies are leading on addressing forest impacts: only 19 of the 500 companies assessed qualify as leaders and 14 backtracked on existing commitments in 2025.
The mining sector in particular is lagging behind agribusiness and forestry in terms of addressing forest impact – over 90% of mining companies disclosing through CDP report have a formal process for assessing biodiversity risk, yet only half have a public policy to address it.
Ultimately the report argues that transformative change would look different to what our current deforestation limiting attempts look like.
They call for strong policy, backed by robust enforcement, which they conclude remains the most durable lever for lasting change. They argue that multiyear regulatory frameworks, sustained public investment in enforcement institutions and tenure recognition backed by durable legal title build the conditions for structural change.
They say that short-term measures, like temporary import bans or one-off crackdowns, might bend a curve for a year but rarely change the incentives behind them.
If deforestation and degradation continue on anything like their current trajectory rather than converging toward zero, the world stands to lose millions of additional hectares of forest by 2030.
If we were able to replicate the one-year, 15 percent drop in deforestation from 2024 to 2025 and apply that rate from 2026 to 2030, we would still lose 22.5 Mha of forest, an area nearly the size of the United Kingdom.
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