Since 1990, the land has lost 178 million hectares of forest, with the fastest disappearing trees in Africa: from 2010 to 2020, forest area on this continent declined by 3.9 million hectares annually, according to a report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
A report on the organization’s website says that forests cover about a third of the land area, which is 4.06 billion hectares. Moreover, more than half of the volume of all forests (54%) are located in five countries – Russia (815 million hectares), Brazil (497 million hectares), Canada (347 million hectares), the USA (310 million hectares) and China (220 million hectares) …
“The world’s forest area continues to decline, with the world losing 178 million hectares of forest since 1990. However, the rate of forest loss has dropped significantly between 1990-2020 due to declining deforestation in some countries,” the study said.
“Africa has the highest annual deforestation rate in 2010-2020 at 3.9 million hectares. South America follows with 2.6 million hectares,” the document says.
The authors note that the largest increase in forest area in 2010-2020 was observed in Asia.
