Deforestation and forest degradation
Forests cover nearly one-third of the land area on our planet and are home to most of the world’s diversity of life on land. They are also essential to human health, purifying our water and air and serving as our first line of defense against new infectious diseases.
© Shutterstock / Rich Carey / WWF-Sweden
Additionally, forests provide livelihoods for billions of people, supplying vital resources such as food and fuel. Forests also play a critical role in mitigating climate change because they act as carbon sinks—soaking up carbon dioxide that would otherwise be in the atmosphere and contributing to ongoing changes in climate patterns.
© Nigel Dickinson / WWF-Canon
Yet, forests across the globe are under threat, jeopardizing these benefits. The threats manifest themselves in the form of deforestation and forest degradation. The leading cause of deforestation is agriculture, with poorly planned infrastructure another significant contributor to global deforestation. In 2025, the world lost 10.6 million acres of tropical primary rainforests, equivalent to a rate of 11 soccer fields per minute.1 The primary causes of forest degradation are logging activities, livestock grazing, and road construction.
Deforestation is a particular concern in tropical rainforests because these forests are home to much of the world’s biodiversity. In the Amazon alone, around 17% of the forest has been lost over the last 50 years, mainly due to forest conversion for cattle ranching. Deforestation in this region is especially rampant near more populated areas, roads, and rivers, but remote areas have also been encroached upon with the discovery of valuable resources like gold and oil.
WWF has been working to protect forests for more than 50 years, partnering with governments, companies, communities, and other stakeholders to promote responsible management of forests and agricultural land, combat illegal logging, reform trade policies, and protect forested areas.
Causes
© Chris J Ratcliffe / WWF-UK
Deforestation can happen rapidly, such as when a fire sweeps through the landscape or the forest is clear-cut to make way for an oil palm plantation. While deforestation appears to be declining in some countries, it remains disturbingly high in others—including Brazil and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Fuelwood harvesting
Around the world, wood remains a popular fuel choice for cooking and heating, and about half of the illegal removal of timber from forests is thought to be for fuelwood.
Two-thirds of global forest cover loss is occurring in the tropic and subtropic regions of the world, where vast clusters of deforestation hot spots—also known as "deforestation fronts"—are destroying the important ecosystem services forests provide. There are 24 of these hot spots that are spread across Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Oceania.
Conversion to agriculture
Expanding agriculture due to increased demand and shifts in diet toward greater meat consumption is responsible for most of the world’s deforestation. In addition, agricultural products, such as soy and palm oil, are used in an ever-increasing list of products, from animal feed to lipstick to biofuels. Rising demand has created incentives to convert forests to farmland and ranchland. Once a forest is lost to agriculture, it is usually gone forever—along with many of the plants and animals that once lived there.
Fires
Fires are a natural and beneficial element of many forest landscapes, but they are problematic when they occur in the wrong place, at the wrong frequency, or at the wrong severity. Climate change and wildfires also mutually reinforce each other, and the fires burning today in much of the world are bigger, more intense, and longer lasting than before. Each year, millions of acres of forest are destroyed or degraded by fire. Fire is often used to clear land for other purposes, like planting crops. These fires not only alter the structure and composition of forests, but they can also open up forests to invasive species, threaten biological diversity, alter water cycles and soil fertility, and destroy the livelihoods of the people who live in and around the forests.
© Andre Dib / WWF-Brazil
Infrastructure
Infrastructure—particularly dams and linear infrastructure such as roads, railways, power lines, and canals—designed without nature in mind is a leading driver of deforestation. Transportation and energy infrastructure are considered essential elements of a thriving economy, but they are often a major cause of negative environmental impacts if they are not designed with nature in mind. Forests are especially vulnerable to these impacts because many of the world’s remaining forest areas are targeted for expanding agriculture, livestock, and timber production. They also contain rich deposits of oil, coal, natural gas, and minerals. Developing the infrastructure required for commodity production and resource extraction—including access roads, railroads, hydropower dams, ports, and power lines—can cause severe environmental damage. This includes the fragmentation and destruction of forest and freshwater habitats, interruption of wildlife migration routes, erosion, air and land pollution, and other indirect impacts associated with making previously inaccessible areas more reachable. In the Brazilian Amazon, for example, 95% of deforestation occurs within about three-and-a-half miles of a road.
Additionally, it is bad for the infrastructure when planning and design neglect to fully consider natural systems. If planners, engineers, and financiers account for the important services intact and healthy ecosystems provide to the long-term viability of infrastructure, they can reduce costly risks caused by landslides, flooding, erosion, and other hazards to people and the infrastructure they rely upon. Projects are more likely to fail or increase significantly in cost when they do not account for social concerns and ecological and climate factors.
Impacts
© WWF-US / Justin Mott
Forests are more than just a collection of trees and other plants—they are integrated ecosystems and are home to some of the most diverse life on Earth. They are also principal players in the carbon and water cycles that make life possible. When forests are lost or degraded, their destruction sets off a series of changes that affect life locally and around the world.
Reduced biodiversity
Most of the documented land-based species can be found in forests. When species lose their forest homes, they are often unable to survive in the fragments of forested land left behind. They become more accessible to hunters and poachers, their numbers dwindle, and some eventually go extinct. Even localized deforestation can result in extinctions, as many unique species exist in small, isolated locations.
Increased greenhouse gas emissions
Forests are carbon sinks and, therefore, help mitigate the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Forests hold about 861 gigatons of carbon, equating to nearly a century of current annual fossil fuel emissions.2
But when forests are cut, burned, or otherwise removed, they emit carbon instead of absorbing carbon. In 2023, deforestation accounted for about 6% of global emissions.3 Forest fires in the Amazon basin in 2024 exceeded the greenhouse gas emissions of many individual countries.4 These greenhouse gas emissions contribute to rising temperatures, changes in weather and water patterns, and an increased frequency of extreme weather events. For example, in Sumatra, rainforests on deep peatlands are being cleared, drained, and converted to pulp plantations, contributing to Indonesia’s high greenhouse gas emissions. Changes in climate can also affect forest-dwelling creatures by altering their habitats and decreasing the availability of food and water. Some will adapt by moving to higher elevations or latitudes, but others will not.
Disruption of water cycles
Healthy forests play a vital role in the local water cycle by helping to create local rainfall. But when deforestation or degradation occurs, forests are less capable of fulfilling this role, resulting in changes in precipitation and river flow.
Increased soil erosion
Without trees to anchor fertile soil, erosion can occur and sweep the land into rivers. The agricultural plants that often replace the trees cannot hold onto the soil as effectively. Many of these crops—such as coffee, cotton, palm oil, soybean, and wheat—can actually exacerbate soil erosion. Scientists have estimated that a third of the world’s arable land has been lost through soil erosion and other types of degradation since 1960. As fertile soil washes away, agricultural producers move on, clearing more forest and continuing the cycle of soil loss.
© Frederick J. Weyerhaeuser / WWF-Canon
Disrupted livelihoods
Billions of people rely on forests for shelter, livelihoods, water, fuel, and food security. Indigenous Peoples and local communities are vital custodians of the planet’s remaining natural landscapes, with at least 15.5% of the total forest area governed by them.5 But deforestation disrupts the lives of these people, sometimes with devastating consequences. In the Greater Mekong in Southeast Asia, where land tenure systems are weak, deforestation has contributed to social conflict and migration. In Brazil, land grabbing and illegal deforestation on Indigenous Peoples’ lands are affecting the availability of resources they need to survive.
Impacted places
Impacted species
What WWF is doing
© Edward Parker
Engaging companies on commodity production
Unsustainable agriculture, grazing, and logging are major threats to forests. WWF addresses these by partnering with companies and through coalitions and multistakeholder platforms to reduce the environmental impact of commodity production and protect and restore forests.
Forests Forward and Nature-Based Solutions Origination Platform
WWF’s Forests Forward corporate engagement program partners with top-tier businesses across sectors, from pulp and paper industry leaders to health care and tech companies, to reduce their forest footprints and support restoration and responsible management. As of 2025, the program was benefiting 4 million hectares of forest, as highlighted in the Forests Forward Impact Report, and includes companies like HP Inc., with whom we’ve collaborated since 2020 to conserve roughly 200,000 hectares of forest together with local partners across the globe.
WWF also promotes Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC®) certification and works with companies looking to implement best practices around nature-based solutions (NbS) to deliver on sustainability and business goals through Forests Forward and our Nature-Based Solutions Origination Platform (NbS-OP). The NbS-OP mobilizes public and private investments into high-quality, landscape-level nature-based solutions, such as forest restoration, protection, and sustainable forestry and agriculture, that deliver durable benefits for our climate, biodiversity, and communities.
Deforestation-Free Leather Fund
To confront deforestation related to cattle production, WWF and leather industry leaders launched the Deforestation-Free Leather Fund to advance sustainable, resilient sourcing practices and send a strong message to supply chain actors of the issue’s urgency.
Sustainable Natural Rubber
WWF helped pioneer the Global Platform for Sustainable Natural Rubber (GPSNR), comprised of 60% of rubber buyers, smallholder farmers, nongovernmental organizations, and academic institutions, to promote sustainable rubber production and trade.
With support from IKEA, WWF is working with smallholder farmers in Bukit Tigapuluh (Thirty Hills), Indonesia, to produce traceable, deforestation- and conversion-free rubber while improving farmers’ incomes and helping protect endangered forest species like tigers, orangutans, and elephants.
© Hkun Lat / WWF-Myanmar
Reinforcing and scaling no-deforestation commitments
WWF works to mainstream best practices by advocating for science-based standards, influencing policy, and integrating forest protection into global climate and biodiversity frameworks.
Science-Based Targets
To help companies more consistently account for and address their land sector emissions, WWF championed the creation of the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) Forest, Land and Agriculture (FLAG) Guidance and FLAG Target-Setting Tool in 2022. To date, nearly 400 businesses have set FLAG targets, which require companies to make a no-deforestation commitment.
WWF also led the development of the first science-based targets for land under the Science Based Targets Network (SBTN). This includes a “No Conversion of Natural Ecosystems target,” where companies setting this target will avoid all further conversion of lands considered to be natural in 2020 after a target year between 2025 and 2030.
Policy advocacy
WWF supports policies worldwide to halt and reverse forest destruction.
In the US, WWF supports the full enforcement of the Lacey Act Amendments of 2008, which made the United States the first country to ban the trafficking of products containing illegally sourced wood. This law has helped reduce imports of illegally sourced wood products by 32% to 44%, but insufficient resources from the federal government and sporadic enforcement limit its effectiveness. WWF also supports legislation such as the FOREST Act and the New York TREES Act that would prevent the importation of agricultural products linked to illegal deforestation.
In Europe, WWF backs the full implementation of the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) and developed guidance to help businesses comply.
On a global scale, WWF played an influential role in the explicit inclusion of forests in the Paris Agreement. Today, we strive to elevate policy commitments by anchoring them in the implementation of that groundbreaking agreement, for example, as part of an actionable framework derived from the Global Stocktake, the review of national climate plans that occurs every five years.
© Getty Images / Thianchai Sitthikongsak / WWF-US
Improving next-generation infrastructure
WWF promotes sustainable infrastructure that supports both people and nature in the following ways:
Building capacity through tools and training
WWF partnered with the International Federation of Consulting Engineers (FIDIC) and AECOM, a global consulting engineering firm, to publish a Playbook for Nature-Positive Infrastructure Development, offering practical guidance for engineers and planners to integrate biodiversity and climate resilience into infrastructure projects. Partners are currently developing training modules around the playbook.
Enhancing implementation at national and local levels
In Colombia, WWF, Colombia’s Ministries of Transportation and Environment and Sustainable Development, and the Colombian Foundation for Conservation and Development published the 2024 Green Road Infrastructure Guidelines, which informed a resolution adopted by the ministries that requires sustainable practices for all road development in the country, including specific guidance for road design and construction. The guidelines are designed to prevent, mitigate, and correct possible negative environmental impacts of road construction and support national and local development while maintaining surrounding ecosystems and integrating input from communities.
WWF leads the Greening Transportation Infrastructure Development (GRID) Integrated Program in partnership with the UN Environment Programme and Asian Development Bank, funded by the Global Environment Facility, which promotes early, integrated planning and decision-making processes to inform sustainable development of ports and roads. It supports national projects in Malaysia, Nepal, the Philippines, Suriname, and Ukraine, along with a global knowledge and coordination platform.
Advancing global policies and practices
At the 2024 UN Biodiversity Conference (CBD COP16), WWF successfully advocated for infrastructure to be recognized as a critical sector in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
References
[1] Tropical Rainforest Loss Slowed in 2025, but Fire is a Growing Threat to Forests Worldwide - WRI
[2] Forest Carbon Stocks – WRI
[3] Global Carbon Budget 2023 – Earth System Science Data
[4] Forest Declaration Assessment 2025
[5] Global Forest Resources Assessment 2025 – Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
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