In 2021, more than 140 countries around the world promised to put an end to deforestation by the end of the decade. Those countries — including Brazil, Colombia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, all of which are heavily forested — acknowledged in their pledge a basic, undeniable fact: Forests provide critical services that we rely on, from producing oxygen to cooling the landscape.

That pledge, just like similar promises made over the years, has so far failed to do much at all.

While there’s some year-to-year variation, deforestation is going up, not down. And last year, the destruction reached new heights. New data from the University of Maryland, a leading authority on global forest loss, reveals that the tropics lost more than 6.7 million hectares (16.6 million acres) in 2024. That’s around the size of Panama and the largest extent of loss in at least the last two decades, the length of UMD’s record.

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