Myanmar · Tree cover, 2001–2025
The Tipping
Point
A surge in clearing after 2011 never really came back down — and on the twenty-five year average, Myanmar's forests have quietly crossed a line most of their neighbors haven't: they now emit more carbon than they absorb.
Satellites have tracked Myanmar's tree cover every year since 2001. The shape of that record isn't a slow, steady decline — it's a sharp surge that arrived around 2012 and simply never reversed.
This piece works through what the data actually shows: when the surge happened, what's driving it, where it's concentrated, and what it means for the carbon those forests hold. Every figure traces back to the Global Forest Watch country package for Myanmar — the same workbook carries a Data Diary tab documenting exactly how each number here was pulled.
Source: Global Forest Watch country data package, Myanmar (Hansen/UMD-GLAD tree cover; WRI & Google DeepMind loss-driver attribution). 30% canopy-density threshold — GFW's own site default — used throughout.
A surge that arrived and stayed
In the first five years on record (2001–2005), Myanmar lost an average of 76,400 hectares of tree cover a year. Loss then climbed almost every year through the early 2010s, peaking in 2016 at 362,552 hectares — 4.7× the starting rate.
Unlike a country still accelerating, the rate since then hasn't fallen back — it's plateaued high. The most recent five years (2021–2025) still average 275,200 hectares a year, close to the post-surge norm. Whatever changed around 2011–2012, the pressure it unleashed hasn't let up.
Annual tree cover loss, hectares, 30% canopy threshold. Peak year 2016 marked.
It's shifting cultivation, not plantations
Loss-driver attribution assigns a single dominant cause to every square kilometre of cleared land, 2001–2025. In Myanmar, shifting cultivation accounts for 61.0% of all tree cover loss — small- to medium-scale clearing for temporary cultivation, typically followed by regrowth, not permanent conversion.
Permanent agriculture is the clear second driver at 33.1%. Together the two agricultural categories explain 94.1% of everything lost — but the mix is the inverse of what shows up in many of Myanmar's neighbors, where permanent conversion typically dominates.
One state carries a third of the loss
14 states & regions
Loss concentrates along the borders
Colour shows how much of each state or region's year-2000 forest is gone. The pattern breaks sharply along a familiar line: Myanmar's border and highland states — where shifting cultivation is the traditional land-use system — carry almost all of the loss. The Bamar-majority central plains barely register.
The sharpest proportional loss
Four states have lost 15–26% of their forest
Mon, Kayin, Chin and Tanintharyi — spanning the southeastern and western borders — have each lost between 15% and 26% of their year-2000 tree cover, the highest proportional rates anywhere in the country.
- Mon26.3%
- Kayin20.8%
- Chin15.7%
- Tanintharyi15.4%
The single biggest share
Shan State alone accounts for a third of national loss
Shan — Myanmar's largest state, bordering China, Laos and Thailand — has lost 1,834,514 hectares since 2001: more than the next two states combined, and 34% of everything lost nationally. At 16.6% of its own forest, the rate is high but not the highest — the sheer size of Shan is what makes the number this large.
- Shan1,834,514 ha · 16.6%
- Tanintharyi578,955 ha · 15.4%
- Kachin568,614 ha · 7.3%
The full picture
The central plains have been largely spared
Zoomed out, the contrast holds: Mandalay, Magway, Ayeyarwady and Yangon — the Bamar-majority heartland — sit under 9% loss each. The pressure sits almost entirely in the upland and border states where shifting cultivation, conflict, and weaker land governance intersect. Hover any state for its exact figures.
Crossing into the red
Averaged across 2001–2025, Myanmar's forests now emit slightly more carbon than they absorb: 123.0 million tCO₂e/yr of gross emissions against 121.6 million tCO₂e/yr of removals — a net flux of +1.4 million tCO₂e/yr. On the whole-period average, that makes Myanmar's forests a net carbon source, not a sink.
The margin is thin, but the trend behind it isn't: gross emissions in the first five years averaged 43.2 million tCO₂e/yr; in the last five, 162.1 million tCO₂e/yr — roughly 3.8× higher. For comparison, Thailand's forests — measured the same way — remain a net sink. Myanmar's have already tipped past that line.
A quarter-century of satellite data shows the same shape twice: a sharp rise around 2012, and no return to baseline since. Myanmar's forests haven't just lost ground — on average, they've stopped being the carbon buffer they once were.
None of this required a single catastrophic year — the surge held its plateau for a decade, across methodology changes and two-plus decades of satellites. That persistence is itself the finding.