Ten countries with most forest area 2020

The Russian Federation had the largest forest area in the world in 2020, amounting to around 815 million hectares, more than twice that of Canada, whose forest area amounted to 347 million hectares.

The forestry industry in Canada

With the third largest forest area in the world, Canada’s forestry industry is a significant contributor to the country’s gross domestic product. In 2019, the nominal GDP of Canada’s forest industry reached more than 23 billion Canadian dollars, with the wood product manufacturing sector alone contributing around 10.48 billion Canadian dollars in nominal GDP. A comparison of Canadian provinces shows that British Colombia has the largest forestry and logging industry in the country, followed by Quebec and Ontario.

The Amazon rainforest in Brazil

Brazil has the second largest forest area in the world after Russia, with total forest areas in the South American country amounting to approximately 497 million hectares in 2020. This is largely due to the fact that around 62 percent of the Amazon rainforest is located in Brazil. The Amazon rainforest is the world’s largest rainforest, what some call “the lungs of the planet”. However, in recent years, deforestation has been salient issue in the Amazon, with illegal logging and wildfires raging across the rainforest have contributed to very high deforestation rates. Indeed, nearly 11 thousand square kilometers were destroyed in the Brazilian Amazon in 2020. Deforestation and its impact on climate change has spurred opposition to the logging industry, which was the sector responsible for the most killings of environmental activists in 2020.