Posted on November, 03 2025

Tropical forests are some of the richest, most biodiverse places on Earth. © César David Martinez

When you sip a cup of coffee or use a rubber band, you’re benefiting from tropical forests. These lush ecosystems provide countless products we rely on daily — from food to materials like wood and paper.

But tropical forests do far more than stock our shelves: they store vast amounts of carbon, regulate rainfall, and shelter most of the planet’s land-based wildlife. Despite their importance, these forests are disappearing fast. With just five years left to meet global promises to end deforestation by 2030, the question is urgent: can we protect the forests that sustain our lives before it’s too late? 

The importance of tropical forests

Forests cover about a third of the world’s land area and nearly half of them are in the tropics. They help regulate the climate by absorbing and storing carbon in their branches, leaves, roots and soils.

Nearly one-third of the world’s population – around 2.5 billion people - depend on forests for their livelihoods, food security and nutrition, including 70 million Indigenous people. 

• The importance of forests
• Unlocking the power of nature for climate action
• COP30: What's at stake at the climate summit in Brazil
• WWF Climate Lead and Cop30 President: Heading to Brazil with optimism
• The triple threat: Unpacking the gaps in global climate commitments
• Driving action to safeguard tropical forests
• WWF at COP30: Find out more

Why are tropical forests under threat

Deforestation is threatening tropical forests around the world. Agriculture is by far the biggest driver of tropical forest loss, as forests are cleared to make way for grazing and crops. Other direct causes of forest loss include logging, mining, infrastructure development and urban expansion. 

Along with deforestation – the permanent conversion of forest to another land use – the world’s forests also suffer from degradation. The forest is still there, but it’s less healthy and is likely to have less biodiversity, absorb less carbon and be less resilient. Causes of degradation include fire, pest infestations, excessive logging and firewood harvesting, and other human-caused pressures. 

Behind the direct drivers are a whole range of socioeconomic, political and market forces – from poorly enforced laws, unclear land rights and rural poverty to commodity prices and perverse subsidies. 

Too often, there’s more money to be made from cutting forests down than keeping them standing – but we’ll all pay the price in the long term. 

Deforestation and agricultural activities encroach on jaguar territory, slowly shrinking the range of jaguars and isolating populations from one another. © Don Getty

What progress has been made on tackling forest loss? 

The importance of ending deforestation and forest degradation, particularly in the tropics, is recognized in multiple international commitments. With the New York Declaration on Forests in 2014, for example, more than 150 governments, companies, Indigenous Peoples and civil society organizations committed to work to end deforestation by 2030.

At the COP26 climate summit, over 140 national leaders representing more than 90% of the world’s forests committed to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030. Countries have also committed to restoring millions of hectares of forest landscapes by 2030. 

But although we’re seeing progress in some areas, the world remains way off track to meeting the 2030 deadline. In fact, the loss of tropical primary forest increased last year, largely due to forest fires which are being made worse by climate change. In total, 8.1 million hectares of forests were lost in 2024 – that’s about the size of Austria. Degradation affected a further 8.8 million hectares. 

On the positive side, forest restoration is expanding. Restoration projects are already in progress across at least 10.6 million hectares – although new forests can’t fully compensate for the loss of old ones. 

What can we do to get back on track?

It’s not – yet – too late to save our tropical forests. This month, the COP30 climate summit is taking place in the Amazon – the world’s largest tropical forest. It is an important moment for countries to reaffirm their commitment to halting and reversing deforestation by 2030, and to turn this into action.  

This action should include:   

• Scaling up finance: Annual investment in forests was around US$84 billion in 2023 and needs to increase to US$300 billion by 2030 according to the UN. It might sound a lot, but governments spent more than US$400 billion in 2023 on subsidies for industries likely to harm forests, while private finance institutions poured hundreds of billions into companies with a high risk of being linked to deforestation. One promising initiative launching at COP30 is the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) – a planned US$125 billion investment fund that will use its profits to make annual payments to tropical forest countries that successfully halt deforestation. Countries can reinvest these dividends, estimated around US$4 per hectare, in forest conservation activities.
• Strengthening protected and conserved areas: Protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures are essential to preventing deforestation and degradation. As part of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, countries have committed to protect 30% of their lands by 2030. A vital part of this is supporting Indigenous Peoples and local communities who have been stewards of their forests for generations, including formalizing and strengthening their rights to manage their territories and resources. 
• Addressing deforestation: Governments and the private sector need to step up efforts to tackle the direct and underlying causes of deforestation. Many leading companies have committed to making sure their supply chains are free from deforestation and ecosystem conversion, and many banks and finance institutions have made similar promises – but there’s still work to be done to put these pledges into practice. 
• Transforming the forest sector: Forests can us with provide timber and other economically important resources – but they need to be managed in a sustainable way. Effective approaches include promoting responsible forestry practices, supporting community forest management, and paying forest managers and communities for maintaining the ecosystem services that forests provide. 
• Ecosystem restoration: Regenerating degraded forest landscapes can help restore biodiversity and ecosystem services, remove carbon from the atmosphere, provide livelihoods for local people, and strengthen climate resilience. As well as restoring and reconnecting areas of natural forest, forest landscape restoration may include other sustainable land uses like agroforestry. 

We can’t meet global goals on climate change, biodiversity and sustainable development without tropical forests. The time for action is now, before it’s too late.  

Discover more

WWF at COP30 
Forests at WWF
Climate & Energy at WWF