About 97% of the wood consumed in Tanzania is sourced from natural forests while only 3% comes from planted trees, with 90% of the produced wood used for wood fuel. The legally allowable wood per year is 42.8 m3 while the total wood demand is 62.3 m3 per year. The wood deficit of 19.5 m3/year is currently met through overharvesting in productive forests and illegal harvesting in protected forests. The total annual forest and woodland loss in the country is 372,871 ha per/year with small scale agriculture being the key driver of deforestation, accounting to about half of the total forest loss in Tanzania.
Increased deforestation and forest degradation practices contribute to the decline of soil moisture and fertility which in turn weaken the adaptive capacity of local communities to climate change and variability induced impacts such as food shortage and drought. Unprecedented deforestation practices undermine carbon sequestration thus exposing ecosystems to global warming and retard global commitments particularly the Paris Agreement UNFCCC COP 21 to keep the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 °C (3.6 °F) above pre-industrial levels; and to pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F).