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 the years shown. Data for Europe cover 26 of the EU members (excluding Cyprus), Russia and a number of other European countries, including Norway, Switzerland, Serbia and Ukraine. Cyprus is included in the EU total, but is part of FAO’s Asia region and is thus not included in the Europe total.

A copy of all International Forestry tables can be accessed in spreadsheet format from the Data Downloads page.

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 2022 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 2021, of which around one half (49%) was used as woodfuel and the remainder as industrial roundwood (for use by wood processors).
• Global production of wood products in 2021 totalled 496 million m³ of sawnwood, 402 million m³ of wood-based panels and 417 million tonnes of paper and paperboard.
• Europe consumed 24% of all sawnwood, 22% of the world’s wood-based panels and 22% of all paper and paperboard in 2021.
• The UK was the third-largest net importer (imports less exports) of forest products in 2021, with net imports of US $9.0 billion. The largest net importer was China.

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