The flagship report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) highlights the state of the world’s forests while exploring the transformative power of evidence-based innovation in the forestry sector.

The publication announces aspects of forest areas of new technologies, creative and successful policies, institutional changes, and new ways of financing forest owners and managers.

Among other priorities, the report outlines strategies to reduce deforestation, one of the main growing environmental threats.

According to agency figures, forested areas are home to 80 percent of all known amphibian species and contain more than half of the world’s carbon reserve in soils and vegetation.

More than 30 percent of new diseases since 1960 are attributed to land use change, including deforestation.

The UN estimates that each year an area equivalent to about 14 million football fields is lost due to deforestation, while the damage caused by pests reaches an estimated 35 million hectares of forests annually.

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