Closing the Forest Ambition Gap: A Review of Nationally Determined Contributions and Biennial Transparency Reports

The international community has repeatedly promised to end deforestation by 2030 to protect the world’s forests. Forest ecosystems play a crucial role in providing services that our societies depend on, like carbon sequestration and storage, water purification, flood risk reduction, erosion control, supporting biodiversity and climate regulation, as well as tangible products like timber, fruits and medicines for those who depend on forests for their livelihoods. Yet the world continues to rapidly lose forest ecosystems, which is accelerating climate change and biodiversity loss.

Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and Biennial Transparency Reports (BTRs) are the mechanism for Parties to the Paris Agreement are a critical entry point for leveraging climate action for forests and other sectors. A new report – Closing the Forest Ambition Gap: A Review of Nationally Determined Contributions and Biennial Transparency Reports – assesses the 39 BTRs and NDCs of countries with a forest cover of more than 100,000 hectares that had submitted an NDC 3.0 by 28 September 2025. It finds that while significantly more NDCs 3.0 setting targets and policy measures for forests than the previous reporting found, forest ambition among these Parties remains critically low and is not aligned with the first Global Stocktake mandate on halting deforestation by 2030.

Other key findings include: 

• Only one NDC explicitly commits to achieving zero deforestation by 2030
• Only 14 NDCs set specific forest-related emissions targets
• Only two of the 79 assessed BTRs include a target to end global deforestation by 2030, underscoring a clear gap between political pledges and action on the ground
• Only 15% (12 BTRs) include deforestation targets and report progress, while the remaining 85% do not report on deforestation at all

The report includes 10 recommendations for policymakers to fill the gap, and will be updated by January 2026 to include all NDCs 3.0 submitted by then.