Introduction

This chapter contains information about world forestry, presenting global figures by region alongside data for the UK and the EU. Topics covered include woodland area, carbon stocks, wood removals, production and apparent consumption of wood products and international trade in forest products.

The data are produced by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Further information on the data sources and methodology used to compile the figures is provided in the Sources chapter.

All of the statistics presented in this chapter have been previously released by the FAO. For further details on revisions, see the International Forestry section of the Sources chapter.

Data for the European Union (EU) relate to all 27 current EU members, excluding the UK, for all of the years shown.  Data for Europe cover 26 of the EU members (excluding Cyprus), the Russian Federation and a number of other European countries, including Norway, Switzerland, Serbia and Ukraine.

A copy of all International Forestry tables can be accessed in spreadsheet format from the Data Downloads web page at www.forestresearch.gov.uk/tools-and-resources/statistics/data-downloads/.

Key findings

The main findings are:

• At around 13% forest cover in 2020, the UK is one of the least densely forested countries in Europe. This compares with 46% for Europe as a whole and 31% worldwide.
• The global forest area reduced by around 4.7 million hectares (0.1%) per year between 2010 and 2020.
• Carbon stocks in forest living biomass have increased in Europe, North & Central America and Asia between 1990 and 2020, but have shown an overall decrease at a global level over this period.
• A total of 4.0 billion m³ underbark of wood was removed from global forests in 2018, of which around one half (49%) was for use as woodfuel and the remainder was industrial roundwood (for use by wood processors).
• Global production of wood products in 2018 totalled 492 million m³ of sawnwood, 404 million m³ of wood-based panels and 408 million tonnes of paper & paperboard.
• Europe consumed around one quarter (24%) of all sawnwood, around one fifth (21%) of the world’s wood-based panels and almost one quarter (23%) of all paper and paperboard in 2018.
• The UK was the second-largest net importer (imports less exports) of forest products in 2018, with net imports of US $8.6 billion. The largest net importer was China.

Downloads

Additional resources

FS2020 Introduction & Glossary

Sources Chapter: International Forestry