An area of forest twice the size of Paris disappears every day although the rate of global deforestation has started to slow, according to a United Nations report issued today.
The destruction of forests not only reduces habitat available for wildlife but also adds to the greenhouse effect because the carbon stored in trees is released into the atmosphere.
Deforestation accounts for 18 per cent of the carbon dioxide produced each year, a significant proportion of the emissions scientists say causing global warming.
Demand for agricultural land is one of the main reasons that forests continue to be erased at the rate of 13 million hectares a year, an area about the size of England.
However, moves by some countries to replant forests has meant the annual net loss has dropped from around 9 million hectares in the 1990s to 7.3 million, according to the State of the World's Forests 2007report.
A huge tree planting programme in China, for example, more than offset large-scale deforestation in other parts of Asia producing a net increase in afforestation in the Asia-Pacific region during the first five years of the decade.
However, forested land in Latin America fell by around 4 per cent compared to 1990.
More than half of global deforestation from 2000-2005 happened in Africa, the report said, underlining its conclusion that poverty and war are major contributors to forest destruction.
"Deforestation continues and it continues at an unacceptable rate, however there are signs of potential change," said Wulf Killmann, a forestry expert at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) which published the report.
Although economic growth often contributes to illegal logging, the FAO concluded that development was, on the whole, beneficial to forests as wealthier countries were more likely to establish conservation policies.
Citing the growth in forests in India and China, it concluded: "Economic development appears to be a necessary condition for deforestation to cease."