As global deforestation slows, Congo Basin loses ever more trees

Trees in Africa’s vast Congo Basin are being cut down at a faster rate even as deforestation in other tropical regions slows.

The amount of land cleared in the central African basin in 2025 almost matched tree loss in Latin America and the Caribbean for the first time since the Forest Declaration Assessment produced its first report in 2015.

About 2.43 million hectares (6 million acres) of tropical forest was lost in Africa last year, up 1.4% from the year before. That compared with 2.54 million hectares in the South and central American region, which includes the Amazon.

The group, which assesses progress in halting deforestation, laid the blame for the persistently high rate in Africa on the uncontrolled expansion of small-scale farming, a lack of political will and inadequate regulation.

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The Congo Basin, a region larger than India that stretches across 12 African nations from Cross River in Nigeria to the Rift Valley in East Africa, is the world’s second-biggest tropical forest area and its biggest tropical carbon sink.

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It’s vegetation absorbs 600 million tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide a year, equivalent to Germany’s emissions.

It ranks among the world’s most-biodiverse areas, boasting 10 000 plant species and forests that provide homes for four species of great apes, as well as forest elephants and okapis – an endangered relative of the giraffe.

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“Once gone, the true value of service rendered by the forest to indigenous and local communities, to our national communities in Congo Basin counties and to the whole planet will be better perceived,” Nguiffo said on a conference call. “This will be too late.”

In addition to poor regulations, he pointed to decades of conflict in the region, much of it in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, that had led to uncontrolled logging.

Overall global deforestation fell 15% last year from 2024, with just over 7 million hectares of forest harvested or burnt. The area lost declined by almost a third in Latin America and the Caribbean, while in tropical regions of Asia it dropped by 11% to 1.6 million hectares.

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