How much deforestation is caused by the products we produce and consume?

Look at a global map of deforestation, and you’ll notice a clear pattern. Most deforestation today is happening in the tropics, while much of the temperate world is gaining forest.¹

But it would be wrong to think that consumers in temperate countries don’t contribute to deforestation at all. They do, through the products they import from other parts of the world.

This trade-driven deforestation is what we try to capture with the visualization below. It focuses on deforestation caused by agriculture, which is by far the largest driver.

It maps deforestation flows from the country of origin — where production is happening — to where the products are consumed.

Using the visualization options, you can switch to a view that shows how much deforestation is driven by consumption in the selected country. On the left, you’ll see where these products were produced.

You can also change the country of focus and adjust the period to see how this has changed over time.

Singh, C., Persson, U. M., Croft, S., Kastner, T., & West, C. D. (2024). Commodity-driven deforestation, associated carbon emissions and trade 2001-2023 (Version 2.1) [Dataset]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10633818
Methodology:

DeDuCE model: Singh, C., & Persson, U. M. (2026). Global patterns of commodity-driven deforestation and associated carbon emissions. Nature Food, 7(2), 138-151. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-026-01305-4
Physical trade model: Kastner, T., Kastner, M., & Nonhebel, S. (2011). Tracing distant environmental impacts of agricultural products from a consumer perspective. Ecological Economics, 70(6), 1032-1040. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2011.01.012

Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado, and Marcel Gerber (2026) - “How much deforestation is caused by the products we produce and consume?” Published online at OurWorldinData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/how-much-deforestation-is-caused-by-the-products-we-produce-and-consume' [Online Resource]

Singh et al. (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data

Singh et al. (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Deforestation embedded in trade” [dataset]. Singh et al., “Commodity-driven deforestation, associated carbon emissions and trade 2.1” [original data]. Retrieved November 13, 2026 from https://ourworldindata.org/how-much-deforestation-is-caused-by-the-products-we-produce-and-consume

A walkthrough of how to explore the tool

Sankey diagrams are an unusual visualization type. So if the tool above doesn’t quite make sense to you, let me walk you through it so you can see the different data views available.

Let’s first take Brazil as an example.

It is the country where the most deforestation happens today. In the visualization below, you can see where the products that caused this deforestation go.

On the right-hand side, you can see that 73% was consumed in Brazil. That means most of its deforestation — around three-quarters of it — was for domestic consumption, not exports. It has a large production and consumption footprint.

Malaysia is one country where this pattern is a bit different.

A substantial amount of deforestation occurs there, particularly for oilseeds. But less than half of its deforestation is for products consumed in Malaysia. You can see this on the right-hand side of the chart below. It exports deforestation to many other countries, including India, China, other Asian countries, and further afield.

But we can flip this and look at where deforestation happened for the products that people in Malaysia consume. This is shown on the left-hand side. About half is due to deforestation in Malaysia itself. The rest comes from countries such as Côte d’Ivoire and Brazil.

On the right-hand side, you can see the products that drove this deforestation. For example, around one-third was for fiber crops such as rubber and cotton, and most of this was from Côte d’Ivoire. Beef was second and was produced domestically and in Brazil.

Finally, you can see that for many high-income countries, domestic deforestation is tiny, but their contributions through trade are not. The United Kingdom deforested just 100 hectares to produce agricultural commodities. But it imported 18,000 hectares, mostly through cocoa from Côte d’Ivoire, beef from Brazil, and oilseeds from Argentina and Paraguay.

Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado, and Marcel Gerber (2026) - “How much deforestation is caused by the products we produce and consume?” Published online at OurWorldinData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/how-much-deforestation-is-caused-by-the-products-we-produce-and-consume' [Online Resource]

@article{owid-how-much-deforestation-is-caused-by-the-products-we-produce-and-consume,
    author = {Hannah Ritchie and Pablo Rosado and Marcel Gerber},
    title = {How much deforestation is caused by the products we produce and consume?},
    journal = {Our World in Data},
    year = {2026},
    note = {https://ourworldindata.org/how-much-deforestation-is-caused-by-the-products-we-produce-and-consume}
}

Reuse this work freely

All visualizations, data, and articles produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

The data produced by third parties and made available by Our World in Data is subject to the license terms from the original third-party authors. We will always indicate the original source of the data in our documentation, so you should always check the license of any such third-party data before use and redistribution.

All of our charts can be embedded in any site.