At the UN’s COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021, 145 countries pledged to end the felling of forests by the end of the decade as this is responsible for about 10 per cent of global carbon emissions.

But the study from a coalition of civil society and research organisations has found that not only are countries failing to meet the stated goal, but in some cases deforestation is continuing to worsen.

“The world’s forests are in crisis. All these promises have been made to halt deforestation and fund forest protection. But the opportunity to make progress is passing us by year after year,” said Erin Matson, a lead author of the Forest Declaration Assessment.

“We saw that in 2021 efforts to end deforestation were already lagging. 2022 was a chance to catch up, but leaders fell short once again. We can’t afford to keep stumbling on the road to no deforestation by 2030. It’s now clear that halting deforestation will require sweeping changes to the economy...