5.2 million hectares net forest loss per year

Around 13 million hectares of forest were converted to other uses or lost each year from 2000 to 2010, as compared with 16 million hectares per year in the 1990s (and out of a total global forest area of 4 billion hectares in 2010). However, the world is still losing forest cover at an alarming rate, even if the rate of deforestation now shows signs of decreasing. While we have lost 53 per cent of the original primary vegetation cover of the planet’s terrestrial surface, mostly in developed nations, some developing countries, such as Brazil and Indonesia, which had the highest net loss of forest in the 1990s, have substantially reduced the rate of vegetation loss.*** Click here to add detailed text (up to 50,000 characters), links, images, videos and files. ***