Posted on November, 12 2025

Forests play a crucial role in climate change mitigation and adaptation. They support critical biodiversity and provide services and livelihoods for millions of people. Creating a sustainable, equitable future and achieving the 1.5°C Paris temperature goal significantly depends on the conservation, restoration and sustainable management of forests around the world. 

Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and Biennial Transparency Reports (BTRs) are the mechanism for Parties to the Paris Agreement to communicate their climate targets and actions and are a critical entry point for leveraging climate action for forests and other sectors. 

Many Parties are still to submit their updated NDCs, but amongst the 39 Parties who had submitted by the deadline of 28 September 2025, forest ambition remains critically low and is not aligned with the first Global Stocktake mandate on halting deforestation by 2030.

Given that these 39 Parties account for 42% of global forest cover, their level of ambition and action will have an outsized impact on the trajectory of global deforestation, its associated emissions and how this affects climate change, biodiversity loss and economic impact.  

The new report Closing the Forest Ambition Gap: A Review of Nationally Determined Contributions and Biennial Transparency Reports, assesses BTRs and NDCs of countries with a forest cover of more than 100,000 hectares that have been submitted by 28 September 2025. It analyses how countries are responding to the Global Stocktake’s Decision paras 33 and 34 in both of these national reports. Key findings include: 

• Only one NDC explicitly commits to achieving zero deforestation by 2030 
• Only 14 NDCs set specific forest-related emissions targets  
• Only two of the 79 assessed BTRs include a target to end global deforestation by 2030, underscoring a clear gap between political pledges and action on the ground 
• Only 15% (12 BTRs) include deforestation targets and report progress, while the remaining 85% do not report on deforestation at all 

Whilst there was increased recognition of forests' role in climate action since the previous round of NDCs, with significantly more NDCs 3.0 setting targets and policy measures for forests than the previous reporti found, Parties are yet to align national climate and forest ambition with global goals of enhanced efforts towards halting and reversing deforestation and forest degradation by 2030. This selective ambition risks creating dangerous blind spots that undermine both climate objectives and global forest goals. 

The report includes 10 recommendations for policymakers to fill the gap:  

Mobilize political and financial leadership for forests: 

1. Make forests a central priority and mobilize a strong political response at COP30: COP30 decisions must explicitly recognise the urgent gap between forest ambition and implementation. 
2. Scale up dedicated forest finance, most immediately into the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF): ambition can only be realised if matched with adequate and predictable finance. TFFF is a promising flagship tool, to channel increased climate finance to forest conservation, restoration, and their sustainable management. 
3. Mobilise technical support for forests in climate action: the integration of nature-based solutions and/or ecosystem-based approaches, particularly forests, into NDCs must become a core political priority supported by sustained technical assistance. 

Build the foundations for forest action in NDCs:  

1. Align NDC ambition with global forest commitments: Parties must enhance NDC ambition by fully aligning with the commitment to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030 as expressed in the outcomes of the first GST and the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use (GLD). 
2. Design SMART targets: Parties must conduct regular assessments of direct drivers of deforestation and this must inform targets designed using the ‘SMART’ framework. 
3. Mainstream forest conservation and sustainable land-use across all sectors in national strategies: Parties must address deforestation drivers across multiple sectors and political will must be mobilised to adopt a whole-of-government approach that integrates forest conservation and sustainable land use into all relevant sectoral policies and investment plans. 
4. Strengthen transparency and accountability in forest reporting: Parties must enhance transparency and accountability in forest reporting by ensuring NDCs clearly define baseline forest conditions consistent with REDD+ MRV standards and IPCC guidelines. 
5. Harmonise monitoring systems for climate, biodiversity, and forests: Parties must align and integrate existing monitoring systems that enable interoperability and simultaneous reporting on climate, biodiversity, and forest goals. 
6. Facilitate inclusive and participatory forest governance: COP30 decisions on NDC processes should emphasise the effective participation of Indigenous Peoples, Local Communities, and forest-dependent populations, recognizing their rights and knowledge as fundamental to success. 
7. Prioritise and transparently finance forest-based solutions for climate and biodiversity: Parties must allocate national resources to forest actions that advance climate mitigation, adaptation, and biodiversity conservation. Redirect public funding away from activities that drive deforestation towards forest protection and restoration, ensuring just and equitable transitions for affected communities.   

This report will be updated by January 2026, including all NDCs 3.0 submitted by then.

The report is produced in partnership with Trillion Trees and Climate Focus.  

For more information, contact: news@wwfint.org and Mel Annetts, mannetts@trilliontrees.org