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The 10 Countries That Are Almost Entirely Forest |
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The FAO counted the world's forests again last October, its first full assessment in five years. The planet is 32 percent forest. The countries that are almost all forest are not the ones anybody names. Brazil misses the top twenty. So do Canada, Russia, Indonesia and the Congo. |
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Source: FAO Global Forest Resources Assessment 2025, released 21 October 2025. Forest as a share of land area, 2025. Sovereign countries only. |
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U.S. Code Title 31 gives the President authority to revalue gold reserves by executive order. No vote required.
If you hold retirement savings in dollar-denominated accounts, what I'm about to show you could be the most important thing you read this year.
Most people don't know that U.S. Code Title 31, Section 5117 gives the President legal authority to revalue America's gold reserves by executive order alone. No congressional vote. No public debate. One signature.
FDR used this exact authority in 1934 — resetting gold from $20.67 to $35 overnight. No warning. Billions in wealth transferred before most Americans knew what happened. The investors already in gold protected everything. Everyone else watched.
Here's what's sitting on the books right now: the U.S. holds 8,133 metric tons of gold valued at $42.22 per ounce — a price set in 1973. At today's market price, that's a $1.59 trillion gap between the government's ledger and reality.
Think about that. Every retirement account in America is priced against a dollar that pretends gold is worth $42. When that fiction breaks, the adjustment won't be gradual.
Trump has publicly questioned why America doesn't "use" its gold. No executive order has been signed. But the legal authority is in place — and the conditions justifying it are mounting.
Here's what it means for your retirement:
Your IRA: Accounts already holding physical gold would sit on the right side of the largest government accounting correction in history
Your 401(k): Most target-date funds hold zero hard assets — they'd miss this entirely, just like 1934
The tax-free move: Reposition part of your retirement into physical gold now — no penalties, no taxable event
The window: FDR gave zero warning — investors who weren't positioned missed the entire move
It's called The Great Gold Reset — the kind of intelligence financial newsletters charge $97 to $297 for. Right now it's yours free.
P.S. If Title 31 is activated, the repositioning window closes before the announcement.
| What's Surprising |
Micronesia is 92.2 percent forest. A Pacific country of about 114,000 people and 700 square kilometres of land now tops the FAO's table. Suriname and Gabon follow at 91.4 percent, apart by less than a tenth of a point. Suriname led the last assessment. The order at the very top is inside the margin of error. The shape of the list is not.
Count territories and the top changes again. French Guiana is 95.6 percent forest, the highest figure the FAO records anywhere. It is an overseas department of France, part of the European Union, and it pays in euros.
Guyana and Suriname sit on the same uncut block of the Amazon. Gabon and Equatorial Guinea sit on the Congo basin. Palau and the Solomons are small, wet and steep. Nobody cleared the land because nobody needed it.
| What's Not Surprising |
The big forest countries are big countries. Russia holds 20 percent of the world's forest, Brazil 12, Canada 9, the United States 8, China 5. Together, 54 percent. Not one of the five is 60 percent forest itself. Russia is half. Canada 42 percent. The United States 34. China 24. Size does the work.
Rich and crowded does not mean cleared. Japan is 68.3 percent forest, more forested than Brazil. Sweden 68.6. Finland 74.2, the highest in Europe, and still only twelfth here. South Korea 64.3, replanted after the war.
Forest tracks farmland. The ten countries here are tropical or island, thinly populated, and mostly poor. Where nobody needs the ground, the trees stay.
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4.14 billion ha The world's forest. Thirty-two percent of the land, about half a hectare for every person alive. |
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54% Share of the world's forest inside five countries: Russia, Brazil, Canada, the United States and China. |
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12th Finland's place on this list at 74.2 percent. Europe's most forested country misses the top ten by half a point. |
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3.26m ha Brazil's net forest loss each year, the largest on Earth. Fifty times the entire forest of the country at the top of this chart. |
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1.61m ha China's net forest gain each year, the largest on Earth. The United States loses 72,000. |
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The FAO runs this assessment every five years, so the next full count is 2030. Two things move sooner. Brazil's space research institute publishes its annual Amazon deforestation estimate in November. And the European Union's deforestation law starts applying to large companies on 30 December 2026, forcing importers of beef, soy, palm oil, cocoa, coffee and timber to prove their goods did not come from cleared land. It has been delayed twice already. We'll be watching. |
