Background: Forests cover about 4 billion hectares (3 952 million hectares or about 40 million square kilometers) or 30.3 percent of the planet's land area. 10 countries hold about two-thirds the world's forest cover.

Each year about 13 million hectares of the world's forests are lost due to deforestation, 6 million of which are classified as primary or old growth forests. Forest regrowth and the establishment of plantations (2.8 million hectares per year) reduced net forest loss to around 7.3 million hectares per year from 2000 to 2005 -- an area the size of Panama and equivalent to 200 square kilometers per day, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).