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Earth's intact forests shrank by an area larger than Austria every year from 2014 to 2016 at a 20 percent faster rate than during the previous decade, scientists said on 20 June 2018 as the UN unveiled an initiative to harness the "untapped potential" of the land sector to fight climate change. Despite decades of long effort to halt deforestation, nearly 10 percent of undisturbed forests have been fragmented, degraded or simply chopped down since 2000, according to the analysis of satellite imagery. Average daily loss over the first 17 years of this century was more than 200 square kilometres (75 square miles).