The State of the World's Forests 2026

The 2026 edition of the flagship biennial report of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is entitled "Restoration of Forests and Landscapes: A Path to a Sustainable Future". The report shows that the global forest area is about 4.14 billion hectares, accounting for about 32% of the land area, storing about 714 billion tons of carbon, and providing food security and livelihood security for nearly 1/3 of the population. However, from 1990 to 2025, about 0.489 billion hectares of forest disappeared due to deforestation, and more than 0.46 billion hectares of forest degradation, with a total area of 1.56 billion hectares of degraded land in the world. The report estimates that the annual economic loss of failing to repair degraded ecosystems is as high as US $878 billion to US $6.3 trillion, equivalent to 2% to 8.3 per cent of global GDP, while the restoration of more than 1 billion hectares of degraded land can bring about US $1.8 trillion per year, with a return of up to US $30 per US dollar invested. The report proposes four accelerated paths: people-centered, landscape scale, financing mechanism and policy coordination.

Original link: https://www.fao.org/publications/sofo/en