France, Oct. 14 -- Seven million hectares of forest - roughly the size of Ireland - were lost to deforestation in 2025, down 15 percent from 2024, according to the Forest Declaration Assessment.

The drop still leaves the world off track to meet a pledge, made at the UN climate talks in 2021, to end deforestation by 2030.

The 2025 figure is "encouraging but so far it's the exception, not a new trajectory", Erin Matson, the study's co-author, from advisory group Climate Focus, told journalists.

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Latin America, historically a global deforestation "hotspot", saw a 33 percent drop in forest loss, with the authors pointing particularly to Br...