Although in recent years, care for the environment and commitment to sustainability have become the central axes of the States’ agendas, deforestation, logging, intensive agriculture, forest fires and the transformation of agricultural land , have led to, Since the beginning of the century, a total of 411 million hectares of forest mass have been lostequivalent to about 10% of the global coverage that existed in 2001.
Currently, according to data from the World Bank, Forests cover about 30% of the earth’s surface; 40 million km2distributed unevenly throughout the planet, where almost 50% of Russia is forest, around 8 million km2, making it the country with the largest forest area.
Although one fifth of the entire forest area in the world is located in RussiaBrazil is not far behind, becoming the second country with the largest forest area, almost 5 million square kilometers of forest cover (around 12% of the world’s forests).
“Brazil’s forest area is almost twice the size of Saudi Arabiathe twelfth largest country in the world. Almost two-thirds of the Amazon rainforest is within its borders.”, explained the Visual Capitalist portal.
Canada and the United States rank third and fourth, with an area of 3.5 million (8.6%) and 3.1 million (7.7%) respectively, followed by China, with forests covering just over 2 million km2. These five countries represent more than half of the world’s forests.
“If the top 10 is taken into account, which adds the forest cover of Australia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia, India and Peru, this figure grows to just over two-thirds of the world’s forests. Expanding the rankings to the top 20 will then represent 80% of the Earth’s total forest cover”he added.
And Colombia?
According to figures provided by the World Bank, Angola, Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela complete the top 15 of the countries cataloged with the greatest forest cover with data updated as of October 2023.
Colombia is in the top 13 with around 589,000 forest area (1.5%), with the Amazon being the largest contribution of forest cover, as in countries such as Peru, Bolivia and Venezuela.
This allows you contribute more than 40% to the country’s carbon neutrality goals regarding the Paris Agreement, legally binding international climate change treaty, adopted at COP21 in 2015.
