21 March 2014: The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) has released a new forest data set based on a global remote sensing survey, which shows that global forests continue to decline, with the greatest rates of deforestation occurring in Africa and South America.

Overall, the data indicates that as of 2010, there were 3.89 billion hectares of forests covering 30% of the Earth’s terrestrial surface. Deforestation amounted to over five million hectares over the 20-year period from 1990 to 2010. The most dominant forest ecosystem remains within the tropical domain, followed by boreal forests, then temperate forests, with the smallest coverage in subtropical areas.

The FAO data is intended to support the achievements of the Zero Illegal Deforestation challenge and was developed through a network of 200 experts across 107 countries. The survey was carried out in collaboration with the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC). [FAO Press Release] [Publication: Global Forest Land-use Change From 1990 to 2010 – An Update to a Global Remote Sensing Survey of Forests]