Forest Landscape Integrity Index

This is the first measure of ecological integrity for all the world’s forests. The study brought together 47 forest experts from across the world to apply recent developments in cloud computing and large new datasets. 

The Forest Landscape Integrity Index shows that globally, only 17.4 million km2 of forest (40%) can be considered having high integrity and only 27% of this area is found in nationally-designated protected areas. Of all the world’s forests found within protected areas, only 56% can be considered having high integrity.

The results of this study are fundamental to current discussions underway regarding the Convention on Biological Diversity, since the current draft of the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework proposes both a goal and an action target relating to ecosystem integrity and there is active discussion amongst Parties about how best this can be quantified and monitored. The results are also highly relevant to the delivery of the Paris Agreement under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change since special consideration needs to be given to forest carbon reservoirs and sinks with high ecological integrity, both within Nationally Determined Contributions and in international finance mechanisms such as the Green Climate Fund.