Seven million hectares of forest were permanently destroyed in 2025, 15% fewer than a year earlier

If 7 million hectares is 15% below the year before ^[1], then 2024 came in near 8.2 million ^[23] and the fall was about 1.2 million ^[24]. The 2030 target, agreed at COP26 in 2021, calls for deforestation to drop by around 1 million hectares per year ^[4]. So 2025 delivered roughly one year of the required cut, once. Both inputs are rounded, which makes 1.2 million an estimate. Erin Matson, a co-author and lead consultant at Climate Focus, said at a media briefing that the 2025 figure is "encouraging but so far it's the exception, not a new trajectory" ^[3].

We would call the Brazil link plausible and unproven. A drop that coincides with a policy does not by itself show the policy caused it, and one year of data cannot separate the two. The report says progress in the region "rests heavily on the choices of a small number of governments and remains highly vulnerable" to recent and upcoming elections across the Amazon basin ^[6]. Brazil has a recent example of the swing: deforestation surged under former president Jair Bolsonaro, father of the candidate in the runoff ^[8].

The Congo basin number is harder to size. The assessment was drafted by a coalition of research groups and nongovernmental organizations ^[2], and both outlets that ran the story used the same AFP report ^[19][20]. This account therefore rests on one wire summary, which does not include the 2024 Congo figure or the Amazon's. Against the global total, 2.4 million hectares would be about a third ^[25], but the wire describes the Congo figure as rainforest loss ^[10] and the global figure as permanent destruction ^[1]. Clearing for agriculture or mining remains the leading driver worldwide ^[21]. Sam Nguiffo, a lawyer and founder of the Centre for Environment and Development in Cameroon, said logging for timber, or felling trees for agriculture or mining, appears to prevail in forest management in Central Africa ^[22]. "Losing such a size of forest every year is a disaster," he said ^[11].

El Nino brings drought, and drought creates conditions for wildfires ^[18]. It has been associated with strong drought in Indonesia, where forest and plantations have burned in Borneo and South Sumatra for months ^[14]. The report says: "If projections of the historically strong 2026-27 El Nino materialise, drought and fire risks will intensify further across tropical forest regions" ^[15]. Matson's 2015-2016 comparison was to tree cover loss ^[16], while the 7 million figure counts permanent destruction ^[1], so her comparison shows the direction of risk and not its size. Her own expectation for 2026 is plain. "We can't fully predict the future but it's unlikely, I would say, that in 2026 we'll see the same kind of reductions (in deforestation) that we saw last year," she said ^[17].