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Data

Annual net change in forest area

How much the area of forest grew or shrank each year, on average, in each country and in the world over 1990–2000, 2000–2010, 2010–2015, 2015–2020 and 2020–2025: new forest from planting and natural expansion minus forest lost to deforestation, in thousands of hectares a year, from FAO's Global Forest Resources Assessment 2025. Negative values are net loss.

Latest value

−4,969.1thousand ha/yr

Countries and areas reporting to FRA 2025, and the world (sum of all 236), 2020–2025. Version FRA 2025 platform, downloaded 2026-10-05.

Annual net change in forest area (thousand hectares per year)

5 values from 1990–2000 to 2020–2025.
Show as a table
Annual net change in forest area, every value
PeriodValue (thousand ha/yr)Status
1990/2000−10,694.5final
2000/2010−3,559.4final
2010/2015−3,911.1final
2015/2020−3,230.1final
2020/2025−4,969.1final
Calculated by Environment Dashboard from FAO. 2026. Global Forest Resources Assessment. https://fra-data.fao.org. Accessed on: 2026-10-04. Licence: CC-BY-4.0. Global estimates: FAO. 2025. Global Forest Resources Assessment 2025. Rome. https://doi.org/10.4060/cd6709en Changes: annual net change calculated from forest area; world total calculated as the sum of all countries and areas. CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use; report CC BY 4.0).

Notes on individual values

  • FRA flag I: Imputed value, desk study, data compiled by FAO.
  • FRA flag A: Normal value, official data reported by country/area.

Where it comes from

Producer
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Forestry Division · Global Forest Resources Assessment 2025
Version
FRA 2025 platform, downloaded 2026-10-05
File
https://fra-data.fao.org/api/file/bulk-download?assessmentName=fra&cycleName=2025&countryIso=WO
Fetched
2026-10-04 (automatically), 1,377,159 bytes
Fingerprint
sha256 cd12ea6ef902e1fc9f9dc07f834eb2e29b95791aa38f060fec9f1e67d11c010c
Copies
No Wayback copy recorded yet.Our copy of the exact file
Cite the producer
FAO. 2025. Global Forest Resources Assessment 2025. Rome. https://doi.org/10.4060/cd6709en. FAO. 2026. Global Forest Resources Assessment. https://fra-data.fao.org. Accessed on: 2026-10-04
Producer
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Forestry Division · Global Forest Resources Assessment 2025
Version
FRA 2025 platform, downloaded 2026-10-05
File
https://openknowledge.fao.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/12322cae-5b20-4be2-927a-72a86fd319e9/content
Fetched
2026-10-04 (automatically), 8,585,230 bytes
Fingerprint
sha256 9b77d433587bec0c6882a3f9e06c96ad6eb33ffe823bfe910e4f6a418cc68d27ETag "bfcf1b18a9f5360baa693fcd6a04029e" · Last-Modified Tue, 21 Oct 2025 06:30:26 GMT
Copies
No Wayback copy recorded yet.Our copy of the exact file
Cite the producer
FAO. 2025. Global Forest Resources Assessment 2025. Rome. https://doi.org/10.4060/cd6709en. FAO. 2026. Global Forest Resources Assessment. https://fra-data.fao.org. Accessed on: 2026-10-04

What was done to it

  1. Read FRA_Years_2026-10-05.csv from the FRA 2025 platform's bulk download (all countries and areas). The vintage is the download date in the member names, 2026-10-05; the platform has no other version label.

    Code: pipeline/src/envdash/transforms/nature/fra_2025.py · code sha256 effd975216c5bb9a… · inputs cd12ea6ef902… 9b77d433587b…

  2. Kept 1a_forestArea (forest area, thousand hectares, as printed) and its flag for 236 countries and areas and the six reporting years 1990, 2000, 2010, 2015, 2020, 2025. Flags: A "Normal value, official data reported by country/area" (194 countries and areas); I "Imputed value, desk study, data compiled by FAO" (42 countries and areas); each country's values name their flag in a note.

    Code: pipeline/src/envdash/transforms/nature/fra_2025.py · code sha256 effd975216c5bb9a… · inputs cd12ea6ef902… 9b77d433587b…

  3. Matched each country and area by its ISO 3 code; French Guiana, Mayotte, Réunion and Svalbard and Jan Mayen Islands, which FRA reports separately, are published as their own entities.

    Code: pipeline/src/envdash/transforms/nature/fra_2025.py · code sha256 effd975216c5bb9a… · inputs cd12ea6ef902… 9b77d433587b…

  4. World = the sum of the forest area of all 236 countries and areas in the file for each year (exact decimal arithmetic), as FAO computes its global figure.

    Code: pipeline/src/envdash/transforms/nature/fra_2025.py · code sha256 effd975216c5bb9a… · inputs cd12ea6ef902… 9b77d433587b…

  5. Annual net change for each interval between reporting years = (forest area at the end − forest area at the start) / the number of years, in thousand hectares per year (exact decimal arithmetic); negative values are net loss. The report defines forest area net change the same way, as the difference in forest area between two points in time.

    Code: pipeline/src/envdash/transforms/nature/fra_2025.py · code sha256 effd975216c5bb9a… · inputs cd12ea6ef902… 9b77d433587b…

  6. For comparison only, the WORLD row of the report's Table 6 (PDF page 36) gives the annual net change as −10 695 thousand ha a year for 1990–2000 (here −10 694.51) and −4 122 for 2015–2025 (from the platform data used here, −4 099.60; that 10-year interval is published here as 2015–2020 and 2020–2025). The platform data can include country revisions made after the report was published.

    Code: pipeline/src/envdash/transforms/nature/fra_2025.py · code sha256 effd975216c5bb9a… · inputs cd12ea6ef902… 9b77d433587b…

What it covers

Geography
Countries and areas reporting to FRA 2025, and the world (sum of all 236)
Basis
FRA definition of forest: land spanning more than 0.5 ha with trees higher than 5 m and a canopy cover of more than 10 percent, or trees able to reach these thresholds in situ, not predominantly under agricultural or urban land use. A land-use definition reported by countries (official data, or FAO desk studies where a country did not report), not satellite tree cover. Net change = (forest area at the end of the interval − at its start) / years in the interval. Net change is not deforestation: gains elsewhere offset part of the forest lost.
Unit
thousand hectares per year (thousand ha/yr)