Deforestation is concentrated in the tropics, with Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bolivia, Indonesia, and Peru losing the most primary forest. In 2023, tropical countries lost 3.7 million hectares of primary forest, an area roughly the size of Taiwan. But the picture is shifting: some of the historically worst offenders are slowing down while newer hotspots are accelerating.
The Countries Losing the Most Forest
Brazil still tops the list. Even after significant recent improvements, it accounted for 30% of all tropical primary forest loss in 2023. The Democratic Republic of the Congo ranked second, losing more than half a million hectares of primary rainforest per year. Bolivia came third, with primary forest loss jumping 27% in 2023 to reach its highest level on record for the third consecutive year. Indonesia and Peru rounded out the top five.
These five countries contain vast stretches of the world’s three great tropical forest systems: the Amazon Basin, the Congo Basin, and the rainforests of Southeast Asia. Together, these regions hold the majority of Earth’s remaining primary forest, which is forest that has never been significantly disturbed by human activity.
The Amazon: Still the Epicenter
Brazil’s Amazon is the single largest front of deforestation on the planet, but the trend line is improving. Between January and August 2024, deforestation alerts in the Amazon dropped 24% compared to the same period in 2023, with the cleared area falling from 3,712 square kilometers to 2,813. August 2024 recorded the lowest deforestation level in six years. Brazil’s share of tropical forest loss fell from 43% of the global total in 2022 to 30% in 2023.
That progress is real, but context matters. Even at reduced rates, Brazil is still clearing more primary forest than any other country. And neighboring Bolivia is moving in the opposite direction, with forest loss climbing year after year. Much of Bolivia’s clearing is driven by agricultural expansion into lowland forests east of the Andes, a pattern that mirrors what happened in the Brazilian Amazon over previous decades.
The Congo Basin: A Growing Concern
The DRC’s forests form the second-largest tropical rainforest block in the world, and they are under persistent pressure. The drivers are different from those in South America. In Central Africa, deforestation is fueled by a combination of agricultural expansion (often small-scale), mineral extraction, infrastructure development, commercial logging, and charcoal production. Charcoal is a primary cooking fuel for millions of people in the region, creating demand that steadily eats into forest edges around population centers.
Unlike Brazil, the DRC has not shown meaningful year-over-year declines. The country consistently loses more than half a million hectares of primary rainforest annually, and population growth and poverty make the underlying drivers difficult to address quickly.
Southeast Asia’s Changing Picture
Indonesia was once synonymous with runaway deforestation, largely driven by palm oil and pulpwood plantations. That has changed substantially. In 2023, only about 15,000 hectares of Indonesia’s tree cover loss occurred within areas legally classified as primary forest. The vast majority of loss, around 60%, happened in secondary forests that had already been logged or disturbed previously.
This shift reflects a combination of government moratoriums on new plantation permits, corporate pledges, and the simple fact that much of the most accessible lowland forest in Sumatra and Borneo has already been cleared. Indonesia still loses significant tree cover each year, but the destruction of untouched old-growth forest has slowed considerably compared to a decade ago.
Hotspots Outside the Tropics
Tropical forests get the most attention, but deforestation is not exclusively a tropical problem. In Canada, industrial development tied to the Athabasca tar sands has cleared thousands of hectares of boreal forest since 2000. Boreal forests store enormous amounts of carbon in their soils and peatlands, making this loss significant even when the area cleared is modest compared to tropical numbers.
Other overlooked hotspots include Zambia, Angola, Cambodia, and Argentina. These countries rarely appear in headlines but are experiencing steady, sometimes accelerating forest loss driven by agricultural expansion, logging, and infrastructure projects.
What’s Driving the Clearing
A global meta-analysis covering 1990 to 2023 found that commercial agriculture, including livestock ranching, is linked to 83% of deforestation worldwide. Wood extraction plays a role in about 52% of cases, and subsistence farming in roughly 50%. These categories overlap because a single area can be affected by multiple drivers: a forest might be logged first, then burned and converted to cattle pasture or cropland.
In South America, cattle ranching and soy production are the dominant forces. In Southeast Asia, palm oil and rubber plantations have historically driven the most clearing. In Central Africa, the picture is more fragmented, with small-scale agriculture, charcoal, and mining all contributing. The common thread is that forests are being converted to meet demand for agricultural commodities, whether for local consumption or international export.
Why Primary Forest Loss Matters Most
Not all tree cover loss is equal. Researchers distinguish between primary forest loss and broader tree cover loss. Primary forests are large, undisturbed ecosystems, defined as at least 50,000 hectares of forest with no significant human activity. When a tree plantation is harvested and replanted, that counts as tree cover loss but not deforestation. When old-growth Amazon rainforest is cleared for cattle, that primary forest and its biodiversity are gone permanently on any human timescale.
This distinction matters for climate as well. Land use change, principally deforestation, contributes 12 to 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Primary forests store far more carbon per hectare than younger or degraded forests, and their destruction releases carbon that took centuries to accumulate.
Efforts to Slow the Clearing
Brazil’s recent drop in Amazon deforestation shows that political will can produce results quickly. The country ramped up enforcement of existing protections, and satellite monitoring systems now detect illegal clearing in near-real time.
On the demand side, the European Union adopted its Deforestation Regulation in 2023, which requires companies selling commodities like beef, soy, palm oil, coffee, cocoa, rubber, and wood in EU markets to prove their products do not originate from recently deforested land. The regulation is expected to cut carbon emissions linked to EU consumption of these commodities by at least 32 million metric tons per year. Its information system launched in late 2024, with companies beginning the registration process.
These supply-chain regulations aim to remove the financial incentive for clearing forest. Whether they succeed depends on enforcement and on whether other major consumer markets adopt similar rules. For now, the geography of deforestation remains concentrated in the same places it has been for decades: the Amazon, the Congo Basin, and pockets of Southeast Asia, with Bolivia emerging as the fastest-growing problem.