Despite global pledges to halt deforestation and forest degradation by 2030, deforestation has increased, according to the 2024 Forest Declaration Assessment, published today.
At the climate conference, or COP 15, in Montreal in 2022, 196 countries signed the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. It stipulated that countries would halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030.
But in 2023, 6.37 million hectares of forest were permanently lost — meaning they were converted to another use of the land and the forest cannot regrow. That’s compared to the target of 4.38 million hectares, which would ideally keep the world on track to reach the 2030 target — putting the world at a 45% deviation from its goal. The report showed that about 3.4 billion hectares out of what was measured could be reforested with adequate resources.
About the author
Jesse Chase-Lubitz
Jesse Chase-Lubitz covers climate change and multilateral development banks for Devex. She previously worked at Nature Magazine, where she received a Pulitzer grant for an investigation into land reclamation. She has written for outlets such as Al Jazeera, Bloomberg, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and The Japan Times, among others. Jesse holds a master’s degree in Environmental Policy and Regulation from the London School of Economics.
