5 SE Asian Nations Collectively Lost Forest Area The Size Of Lebanon In 2024; 30% Of Losses In Protected Areas

BANGKOK — The Mekong countries of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam lost a combined area of tree cover of nearly a million hectares in 2024, or an area almost the size of Lebanon. That’s according to Mongabay’s analysis* of satellite data published by the Global Land Analysis and Discovery (GLAD) laboratory at the University of Maryland, in partnership with Global Forest Watch (GFW).

GFW data show 991,801 hectares (2.45 million acres) of tree cover were lost in 2024, including nearly 220,000 hectares (544,000 acres) of primary forest, across the five Mekong countries. More than 30% of tree cover loss recorded in 2024 occurred inside protected areas, although across the region, the rate of deforestation — both within protected areas and outside of them — slowed slightly from 2023. Despite this, the drivers of deforestation vary somewhat from country to country, and last year’s losses still reflect a grim trajectory for forests in the Mekong region.

The economies of almost all Mekong countries are heavily reliant on agriculture, with forests cleared for both agribusiness-run plantations or subsistence farming plots. But research indicates the conversion of forest to croplands has resulted in increasingly unpredictable weather patterns and subsequently poorer agricultural yields. Illegal logging has also ravaged the Mekong’s forests, while large-scale infrastructure projects threaten critical ecosystems.

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GFW data show that Cambodia lost more than 93,000 hectares (230,000 acres) of forest in 2024. While this was 22.6% lower than in 2023, the majority of the deforestation — roughly 56% of all tree cover loss recorded in 2024 — occurred inside Cambodia’s protected areas. These calculations were based on official government data sets for protected areas, after Cambodia’s protected area network expanded by roughly a million hectares (2.5 million acre) in mid-2023.

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https://news.mongabay.com/2025/10/protected-areas-hit-hard-as-mekong-countries-forest-cover-shrank-in-2024/