Forests: World Still Seeing Net Loss -- U.N.
Copyright 2001 Environment and Energy Publishing, LLC Greenwire
October 5, 2001
By Tim Breen, Greenwire associate editor
The world lost nearly 10 million hectares of forest every year in the 1990s, with new natural causes flaring up with long-standing human ones, a United Nations panel reported this week. A continuing trend was high losses in the developing world compared to the West, where forests actually expanded slightly in the decade.
According to State of the World's Forests 2001, issued by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization on Wednesday, there are 3.87 billion hectares of forest in the world, about 95 percent of them natural and the rest plantations. Forests increased in some areas by 5.2 million hectares annually in the 1990s, but decreased 14.6 million hectares elsewhere, leaving a 9.4 million hectare net annual loss, UNFAO found. While tree-cutting for agricultural and urban expansion
remains the leading cause of deforestation, two natural causes arose in the decade to make a dent: In December, 1999, fierce windstorms struck Europe and toppled countless trees, while in 1997-1998 and 1999-2000 severe wildfires burnt forests in the western United States, Ethiopia, eastern Mediterranean and Indonesia. Boding well for the future, UNFAO noted, governments and communities are now better equipped for dealing with such phenomena.
Another recent problem on a smaller scale than forest loss has been commercial harvesting of "bushmeat," which has reached crisis proportions in tropical Africa and threatens many species of antelopes and primates, UNFAO said. That, too, is being better addressed by governments now, it said.
Other emerging trends are greater reliance on plantations for industrial wood. Half of all plantations are less than 15 years old, and about 62 percent are in Asia. UNFAO also reported that biotechnology does not appear to have been applied to the forest sector, but field trials regarding commercial transgenic trees are under way in several countries.
Also emerging is a new willingness to speak openly about government corruption and other illegal acts that can sunder forests, a "taboo subject until very recently," the report says. Certification of sustainable timber practices is also gaining acceptance, although still only about 2 percent of the world's forests are in such programs. Finally, most countries are now conducting national forest programs, and progress on three international pacts -- the Convention on Biological Diversity, Framework Convention on Climate Change (the "Kyoto Protocol") and U.N. Forum on Forests have brought greater attention to the condition of the world's forests, UNFAO said.