India among top 10 nations with largest forest carbon sinks: Report

India ranked among the world's top ten countries with the largest forest carbon sinks, absorbing about 150 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year between 2021 and 2025, according to a new report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

The report, released on Tuesday, said that globally, forests acted as a net carbon sink during this period, removing about 0.8 billion tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere annually.

The FAO report titled "Forest Emissions and Removals - Global, Regional and Country Trends 1990-2025" said that during 2021-2025, global forests sequestered 3.6 billion tonnes of CO2 per year on forest land.

However, this was partially offset by emissions from net forest conversion (a proxy for deforestation), estimated at 2.8 billion tonnes annually. As a result, global forests removed 0.8 billion tonnes of CO2 per year from the atmosphere during this period.

The report said that a decade earlier, these net removals were nearly twice as large, at 1.4 billion tonnes per year.

Between 2021 and 2025, the strongest forest carbon sinks were in Europe and Asia, removing 1.4 billion tonnes and 0.9 billion tonnes of CO2 per year, respectively.

The Americas and Africa recorded the largest emissions from deforestation, at 1.8 billion tonnes and 0.7 billion tonnes per year.

The Russian Federation had the largest carbon sink at 1,150 Mt CO2 per year, followed by China (840 Mt), the US (410 Mt), Brazil (340 Mt), India and Belarus (150 Mt each), South Africa (75 Mt), Ghana (55 Mt), the Republic of Korea (45 Mt) and Honduras (35 Mt).

Together, these top 10 countries accounted for nearly 90 per cent of global forest carbon sequestration.

By contrast, Brazil (1,242 Mt CO2 per year), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (156 Mt), and Peru (131 Mt) had the largest emissions due to net forest conversion during 2021-2025.

Other major emitters included Canada (93 Mt) and Cambodia (72 Mt).

At the regional level, the report said forests in Europe consistently acted as carbon sinks over the entire study period, with annual removals ranging from 1.2 to 1.8 billion tonnes of CO2, averaging 1.4 billion tonnes in 2021-2025. In Asia, average removals increased from 0.8 billion tonnes per year in 1991-2000 to 1.2 billion tonnes per year in 2021-2025.

The Americas and Africa remained the largest emitters overall.

Between 2021 and 2025, the Americas emitted about 1.8 billion tonnes of CO2 annually from net forest conversion, while Africa emitted 0.7 billion tonnes per year.

Asia's emissions from net forest conversion declined sharply to 0.3 billion tonnes per year during this period.

When combining removals and emissions, the Americas emerged as the largest net emitter during 2021-2025 (+1.0 Gt CO2 per year), followed by Africa (+0.6 Gt). In contrast, Europe (-1.4 Gt) and Asia (-0.9 Gt) were overall net CO2 sinks.

The FAO report is based on data from the newly released Forest Resources Assessment (FRA) 2025 and provides estimates for 220 countries and territories covering the period 1990-2025.