Sized forest area in 25 years-A new, definitive U.N. report on the world’s forests finds that the rate of deforestation is slowing down — but that its global toll has been immense in the last 25 years.

Highlights

• Food and Agriculture Organization’s 2015 Global Forest Resources Assessment, the world’s forested area declined from 31.6 to 30.6 percent of the Earth’s land surface.
• This represented a loss of 129 million hectares of forest — equivalent to nearly 500,000 square miles. According to the United Nations, that’s “an area almost equivalent in size to South Africa.”It’s also nearly two Texases.
• From 1990 to 2000, the continent lost 3.5 million hectares of natural forests per year on average, although as deforestation rates declined, especially in Brazil, that decreased to 2.1 million hectares annually over the past five years.
• The world’s forests store an enormous 296 billion tons (or gigatons) of carbon, says the FAO, but over the last 25 years they gave up 17.4 billion tons worth.

Expected Questions

The Giant Panda is the official symbol of the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature). In which country is this animal found?

Which is the first state to implement the path-breaking proposal that environment should be included as a separate subject in schools?