Forests worldwide cover over 3.8 billion hectares (9.6 billion acres). In general, the area of forests is declining slowly - at a rate of about 0.2 percent annually; the greatest rates of loss are in Africa, South America, and parts of Asia, in all cases in tropical forest regions. The decline in forest area shown in Table 1 for the United States is at odds with U.S. Forest Service data that is discussed later in this report. The difference is attributable to recent U.S. changes in the definition of forests that served to increase the forest area nationally; these definitional changes were not recognized by FAO in the preparation of the information report herein.  It may be worth noting that population growth continues at a rate above 1.0 percent, while the area of forests is declining. The net effect is declining forest area per capita in every region of the world.

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