State of the Planet Address 2023

Our 2023 State of the Planet Address was a compelling reminder of the plight our world’s forests are facing, and the steps we can all take to bring them back to life.

Forests are essential for nature, people and a stable climate. They are also vital for the health of our future planet.

But despite their importance, we're failing our forests, and the people and wildlife that depend on them, on a catastrophic scale. We need to accelerate global efforts to ensure we make urgent progress on the twin goals of halting and reversing deforestation by 2030.

WWF’s landmark new Forest Pathways Report is the first ever comprehensive global blueprint showing how we move away from failure and towards meeting our global forest goals.

Across the world, three major regions – the Amazon, the Congo, and the Borneo-Mekong-South-East Asia basins – together account for 80% of the world’s remaining tropical forests and are home to two-thirds of terrestrial biodiversity.  

With established offices and a suite of partners across the Amazon region, Congo Basin and South East Asia, WWF is uniquely positioned to keep these three remaining tropical forest basins standing.  

Working with our offices in China and Gabon, we are taking significant steps to achieve a major goal to ensure that, by 2025, 100% of forest concessions operating in Gabon will have to be FSC-certified.  

We are pursuing a number of strategies to keep the vast Amazon biome from reaching an irreversible tipping point. This includes empowering Indigenous peoples and local communities to fight deforestation on their lands.

And we are working with partners in Papua New Guinea to help combat illegal logging and forest destruction.