Short answers, pulled from the story.
Agriculture is the overwhelming direct cause of deforestation, responsible for nearly 90% of global deforestation in 2025. Cropland expansion and pasture creation are the primary drivers, with large-scale commercial agriculture including cattle ranching, soya bean, and oil palm cultivation accounting for 40% of tropical deforestation between 2000 and 2010.
An estimated 420 million hectares of forest have been lost through conversion to other land uses since 1990, an area roughly the size of Libya. The rate of deforestation has decreased over the decades but remained at approximately 10.9 million hectares per year in 2015-2025.
Deforestation contributes about 12% of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, with estimates ranging from 6% to 17%. Annual carbon emissions from tropical deforestation doubled over the last two decades, rising from 0.97 petagrams of carbon per year in 2001-2005 to 1.99 petagrams per year in 2015-2019. Standing tropical forests also help cool the average global temperature by more than 1 degree Celsius.
The Glasgow Leaders' Declaration on Forests and Land Use was signed in November 2021 at the COP26 climate summit by 141 countries, pledging to end and reverse deforestation by 2030. The agreement was accompanied by about 19.2 billion dollars in associated funding commitments, but is not legally binding as it was entered into outside the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Deforestation eliminates species that buffer humans from zoonotic diseases and forces disease-carrying animals into neighboring habitats, increasing human exposure. A 2025 pan-tropical analysis found that local warming from tropical deforestation between 2001 and 2020 was associated with roughly 28,330 additional heat-related deaths per year. The World Economic Forum estimates that 31% of emerging diseases are linked to deforestation.
Africa recorded the largest annual rate of net forest loss in 2010-2020, at 3.9 million hectares, followed by South America at 2.6 million hectares. Tropical and subtropical forests in emerging economies face the most extreme deforestation, with West Africa losing up to 90% of its coastal rainforests since 1900 and Madagascar losing 90% of its eastern rainforests.