Fact-check: Is Pakistan’s forest cover the lowest in the world?

Multiple social media users are claiming that the United Nations has declared Pakistan to have the lowest forest cover in the world.

The claim is false.

Claim

“According to a report of the United Nations, Pakistan has a forest cover of only 1.85%, the lowest in the world,” wrote a Twitter user on May 24.

The tweet has been retweeted over 300 times and liked nearly 1,000 times, to date.

The identical text has been shared on Facebook.

Fact

Pakistan’s total forest cover, compared to its geographical area, is 4.6%, which is not the lowest in the world. Neither has the United Nations issued any such report that ranks Pakistan as having the lowest expanse of woodland in the world.

Mahvash Haider Ali, the national information officer at the United Nations in Pakistan, told Geo Fact Check via messages that she could not locate any such United Nations report that social media posts were citing.

“We follow the data of [Pakistan’s] ministry of climate change and environmental coordination,” Ali said, “The official percentage of forest cover in Pakistan for 2020 was 4.6%.”

Ali then shared a 2020 report published by the United Nations' Global Forest Resources Assessment. As per the report, Pakistan had a wooded area of 3.73 million hectares out of its total land area.

“There are many countries that have less forest area compared to Pakistan,” she added. The list placed Pakistan at number 83 out of 238 countries in 2020.

Separately, Geo Fact Check reached out to Pakistan’s state-run National Forest Monitoring System for the latest statistics.

The National Forest Monitoring System also provided the 2020 data regarding Pakistan’s forest cover. There is no updated data as of yet.

With additional reporting by Muhammad Binyameen Iqbal

Follow us on @GeoFactCheck. If our readers detect any errors, we encourage them to contact us at [email protected]