Internationally Recognised Deforestation Definition

To facilitate broad acceptance in the global market, the SHC assessment of deforestation risk is based, as far as possible, on internationally recognised definitions of deforestation of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (UN FAO).

The relevant definitions taken from the UN FAO Global Forest Resource Assessment 2025 are:

Deforestation is “the conversion of forest to other land use independently of whether human-induced or not”.
A forest is "land spanning more than 0.5 hectares with trees higher than 5 meters and a canopy cover of more than 10 percent, or trees able to reach these thresholds in situ. It does not include land that is predominantly under agricultural or urban land use".

UN FAO elaborates on the deforestation definition by noting that the term:

includes the permanent reduction of the tree canopy cover below the minimum 10% threshold;
includes areas of forest converted to agriculture, pasture, water reservoirs, mining and urban areas;
includes areas where, for example, the impact of disturbance, over-utilisation or changing environmental conditions affects the forest to an extent that it cannot sustain a canopy cover above the 10% threshold;
excludes areas where the trees have been removed because of harvesting or logging, and where the forest is expected to regenerate naturally or with the aid of silvicultural measures.

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