Sovereign and dependent territory rows of the World Bank “Forest area (% of land area)” indicator (top 30 by most recent year). Coverage starts in 1990. Aggregates (region.id === “NA”) excluded.
Chart ready. Press play to start.
How to use this chart
Play/Pause starts and stops the year-by-year animation, the year slider jumps to any year, and the speed selector (0.5×, 1×, 2×) changes playback speed. Each year shows the top 12 entries out of the 30 held in the dataset.
About this ranking
About this metric. “Forest Area Share by Country (Time Series)” reformats data published by the World Bank (World Bank indicator code AG.LND.FRST.ZS). Values are expressed in %.
What to watch. Suriname and Gabon top the chart with over 90% forest cover, while forest giants Russia, Brazil and Canada sit far lower — share and area are different games. Watch Brazil’s percentage erode as farmland advances into the Amazon.
Caveats. Forest share divides forest area by total land area, so vast countries rank low despite holding the largest forests on Earth. Definitions of “forest” (canopy thresholds, plantations) vary between assessments, and reclassification can shift a share without a single tree changing.
Trends in the data
Very few of these 30 countries have clearly raised their forest share. The largest increase is Bhutan, from 53.65% in 1990 to 71.61% in 2023 — 17.96 percentage points, moving it from 25th to 15th. Bhutan’s constitution requires that at least 60% of the land remain forested in perpetuity, and most of the gain was achieved by the early 2000s (53.65% in 1990, 65.48% in 2000, 70.97% in 2010). Fiji added 12.07 points, from 51.43% to 63.50%. Costa Rica, often cited as a reforestation success, went from 56.94% to 60.40%, dipping through the 1990s before turning around in the 2000s.
On the losing side, Equatorial Guinea — the world leader in 1990 at 96.23% — is down to 86.39% and 7th in 2023. Liberia fell from 88.51% to 78.14%, and Guinea-Bissau from 79.42% to 69.51% (9th to 17th), as West African forest cover thinned. Brazil dropped 11.48 points, from 70.46% to 58.98%, sliding from 15th to 29th. Sitting that close to the bottom of this table means Brazil could fall out of the top 30 at the next revision.
The 30-country average moved only from 74.94% in 1990 to 73.10% in 2023, a fall of 1.84 points. Concluding from this that the world’s forests have barely shrunk would be wrong. These are the 30 countries with the highest forest share in the latest year, so countries that lost a great deal are screened out before the chart is drawn. The top-30 cut is itself a mechanism that pushes the fastest-shrinking countries off the screen. To follow the world total, use data on forest area rather than forest share.
Note also that only 26 of the 30 countries have a value in 1990; the earlier years carry gaps. A line that begins partway through does not mean forest appeared that year, only that the statistics were compiled later. And a slow drift downwards is common: Laos moved from 11th to 16th and Zambia from 23rd to 28th. Remember, finally, that a high forest share and a large forest area are different things — Russia, Brazil and Canada hold some of the largest forest areas on earth but rank low on share because their territories are so large.
Trivia quiz
Because forests absorb CO2 and release oxygen, what is the Amazon sometimes called?
The 'lungs of the Earth', although its actual net oxygen contribution is debated. (Source)
What is the replanting of forests after clearing called?
Reforestation, a key way to restore or maintain forest cover against deforestation. (Source)
What term describes a forest or ocean that absorbs and stores more carbon than it releases?
A carbon sink. Forests are major carbon sinks and central to climate mitigation. (Source)