Deforestation is most severe today in tropical South America and Central Africa. In 2024, global forest loss hit record levels, with Brazil alone accounting for 42% of all tropical primary forest destruction. Bolivia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of Congo, and Colombia round out the worst-affected regions, all posting sharp increases in forest loss over the past year.
Brazil Still Leads, but Progress Is Mixed
Brazil contains the world’s largest stretch of tropical forest and remains the single biggest source of forest loss on the planet. Within the Amazon specifically, deforestation dropped 11% between August 2024 and July 2025 compared to the prior year, bringing the cleared area down to about 5,800 square kilometers. That decline reflects renewed enforcement efforts by the Brazilian government.
But the Amazon isn’t Brazil’s only vulnerable landscape. The Cerrado, a vast tropical savanna south and east of the Amazon, saw an 11.5% drop in clearing over the same period, yet it remains under heavy pressure from cattle ranching and soy farming. Because the Cerrado has far fewer legal protections than the Amazon, agricultural expansion continues to eat into it year after year. The combination of these two biomes means Brazil’s overall contribution to global forest loss stays enormous even when individual rates dip.
Bolivia’s Unprecedented Surge
The most dramatic shift in 2024 happened in Bolivia. Primary forest loss there skyrocketed by 200%, reaching 1.5 million hectares. For the first time, Bolivia ranked second in the world for tropical forest destruction, overtaking the Democratic Republic of Congo despite having less than half of its forest area. Much of the damage was driven by fires set to clear land for agriculture, compounded by drought conditions that let those fires burn far beyond their intended boundaries.
The Congo Basin Is Breaking Records
Central Africa’s Congo Basin, the world’s second-largest tropical rainforest after the Amazon, posted its worst numbers on record in 2024. The Democratic Republic of Congo lost 1.2 million hectares of natural forest in a single year, releasing roughly 820 million metric tons of CO₂. Since 2002, the DRC has lost 7.4 million hectares of humid primary forest.
The drivers there look different from South America. Shifting cultivation, where small farmers clear patches of forest, grow crops for a few seasons, then move on, accounts for the largest share of tree cover loss at 17 million hectares over the past two decades. Permanent agriculture, settlements, and wildfire add to the toll. Fires played an outsized role in 2024, responsible for 7% of all tree cover loss that year.
Next door, the Republic of Congo saw primary forest loss surge 150% compared to the previous year. Fires caused 45% of the damage, worsened by unusually hot and dry weather. Together, these two countries represent a rapidly growing share of global deforestation that gets far less international attention than the Amazon.
Colombia’s Reversal
Colombia had been a relative bright spot after its 2016 peace agreement initially led to a spike in land grabbing, followed by government crackdowns that brought rates down. That progress reversed in 2024, with primary forest loss jumping nearly 50%. Cattle ranching, coca cultivation, and illegal mining continue to push into Colombia’s portion of the Amazon and its Pacific coast rainforests.
Southeast Asia: A Different Trajectory
Indonesia was once among the world’s worst deforesters, clearing vast tracts for palm oil and pulpwood plantations. Its trajectory has shifted. In 2024, Indonesia lost 260,000 hectares of natural forest, a fraction of what it lost during peak years in the mid-2010s. Still, the cumulative damage is staggering: since 2001, Indonesia has lost 32 million hectares of tree cover, roughly 20% of what it had at the start of the century.
The improvements came largely from a national moratorium on new palm oil concessions and stricter peatland protections. But neighboring countries in Southeast Asia, particularly Myanmar, continue to lose forest to illegal logging, agricultural expansion, and conflict-related clearing.
The Gran Chaco and Other Dry Forests
Tropical rainforests dominate deforestation headlines, but some of the fastest clearing is happening in dry forests and savannas. The Gran Chaco, a vast lowland stretching across Argentina, Paraguay, and Bolivia, is one of the most threatened ecosystems on Earth. Pasture expansion for cattle ranching has a greater biodiversity impact there than cropland expansion, and the damage is largely driven by domestic consumption of beef and soy within Argentina and Paraguay rather than exports.
Dry forests like the Chaco often lack the legal protections and monitoring infrastructure that rainforests receive. This makes them especially vulnerable. Researchers have emphasized that focusing conservation efforts only on rainforests risks overlooking massive biodiversity losses in these drier biomes.
Why It Keeps Happening
Agriculture, forestry, and other land use account for about 21% of total global greenhouse gas emissions. Deforestation is a major piece of that, driven overwhelmingly by the demand for food and timber. Cattle ranching, soy production, palm oil, and logging are the primary commodities pushing forests down across the tropics.
A significant share of this destruction is tied to international trade. Research from Princeton found that consumption-driven deforestation caused by 24 wealthy nations was responsible for 13.3% of all habitat loss experienced by forest-dependent birds, mammals, and reptiles worldwide between 2001 and 2015. On average, these countries caused wildlife habitat losses abroad 15 times greater than within their own borders. U.S. consumption hit Central American forests hardest, while demand from China and Japan drove losses in Southeast Asia’s rainforests. A quarter of critically endangered species had more than half their habitat loss linked to international consumption during that period.
Can Trade Rules Make a Difference?
The European Union’s Deforestation Regulation aims to block products linked to deforestation from entering EU markets. Modeling suggests it could push high-deforestation countries like Brazil, Indonesia, and Malaysia to reduce clearing, but the picture is complicated. Producers in those countries may simply redirect exports to less regulated markets in Asia or the Middle East, a pattern researchers call “market leakage.” Earlier EU rules targeting illegal timber did reduce imports from high-risk countries into Europe but had limited impact on global deforestation for exactly this reason.
Without coordinated international action, regulations from any single trading bloc risk shifting the problem rather than solving it. Countries with weak governance and enforcement face the biggest challenges, and the complexity of global supply chains makes tracing the origin of commodities genuinely difficult. The most effective approach likely combines trade rules with direct support for forest-rich countries, stronger land-use monitoring, and economic alternatives for communities that currently depend on clearing forest to survive.