Which Countries Have the Largest Forests?

Which Countries Have the Largest Forests?

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Since the last ice age, the Earth’s forest cover has fallen by 20 million km² or 2 billion hectares. Half of the loss occurred since the year 1900 due to expanding agriculture and industrialization.

Now forests cover about 30% of the Earth’s land, about 40 million km², distributed unevenly across the globe.

We visualize the top 15 countries with the largest forests, measured in square kilometers. Data for this visualization and article comes from the World Bank, using data for 2021 that was last updated in October 2023.

Ranked: Top 15 Countries with the Biggest Forests

Predictably, the largest country in the world also has the biggest forest area. Nearly 50% of Russia is forest, measuring roughly 8 million km². This is bigger than the total land area of every other country in the world—with the exception of China, the U.S., Canada, Brazil, and Australia.

It also means one-fifth of the world’s entire forested area is in Russia.

Most of Russia’s forests are boreal, to survive the colder, drier climes in the country, and are made up of deciduous and coniferous tree species including larch, pine, spruce, and oak.

At second place, Brazil has nearly 5 million km² of forest cover (about 12% of the world’s forests), thanks to almost two-thirds of the Amazon rainforest inside its borders. For context, Brazil’s forested area is almost twice the size of Saudi Arabia, the 12th largest country in the world.

The Amazon also contributes significantly to Peru’s forest cover (ranked 10th on this list) along with Colombia (13th) Bolivia (14th) and Venezuela (15th).

Canada and the U.S., rank third and fourth with roughly the same forest cover—3 million km²— with several forests on both coasts extending across their shared border.

China rounds out the top five, its forests covering slightly more than 2 million km².

Together the top five countries account for more than half of the world’s forests.

When taking in the top 10, which adds in forest cover from Australia, the DRC, Indonesia, India, and Peru, this grows to slightly more than two-third’s of the world’s forests. Expanding the ranks to the top 20 will then accounts for 80% of the Earth’s total forest cover.

Natural Forests vs. Planted Forests

Not all forests are created equal. Primary forests—forests undisturbed by human activity—are better carbon sinks and have greater biodiversity than human-planted ones.

Here’s how each country’s forest cover is divided between primary and naturally-regenerating forests (forest where there are clearly visible indications of human activities but are now slowly reverting back to their natural state) and human–planted ones.

In countries like Bahrain and Kuwait, areas of extreme aridity, where forests would not occur naturally, human-planted forests account for all forest cover.

But even across large parts of Europe, planted forests vastly outnumber primary and naturally-regenerated ones, indicating how much deforestation occurred on the continent in the last three centuries, which is now being steadily reversed.

In China, which increased its forest cover by the size of Norway in the last three decades, nearly 40% of the total forested area is planted.

Experts say that reversing forest degradation and protecting primary forests—holders of an incredible amount of carbon that would be released into the atmosphere when logged—should be prioritized instead of just planting new forests.