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WORLDWIDE
FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS
UN to
Report Deforestation Rate Slowing Slightly, But Remains High
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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org
http://forests.org/ -- Forest Conservation
Portal
http://forests.org/web/ -- Discuss Forest
Conservation
12/20/00
OVERVIEW
& COMMENTARY
The
long awaited United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation's
(FAO)
most recent assessment of the world's forests, done once a
decade,
is soon to be released. Preliminary
indications are that the
rate of
forest loss worldwide has declined somewhat over the last
decade;
but not by much. During the 1980s,
deforestation of an
estimated
11.3 million hectares occurred worldwide each year, an area
roughly
the size of Greece. The FAO now estimates that the annual
deforestation
rate has fallen by about 10% to about 10.2 million
hectares
a year. While the trend is significant,
this is NOT good
news. The world CANNOT continue to sustain such
losses while
maintaining
global ecological processes and patterns.
Global forest
sustainability
will require declines in deforestation rates that are
orders
of magnitude higher; and indeed reversed through increased
forest
cover brought about through restoration and natural
regeneration.
Yet,
you cannot address the problem of forest loss unless you know
its
attributes-and the FAO does a reasonable job in this regard. But
no
amount of spin - and my hopes are they do not try to do so in the
final
report - makes a 10% reduction, from an ecologically atrocious
level
of forest devastation, acceptable.
There is still no globally
agreed
upon method to further slow and halt continued deforestation
and
diminishment of standing forests. Until
that time, these
continued
high rates of deforestation are ominous and troubling. We
hope to
bring further coverage of this major quantification of the
decline
in the World's forests to you when it is available.
Following
is coverage of the imminent release of the report.
g.b.
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TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Useful trees
Source: The Economist, Copyright 2000
http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=455303
Date: December 18, 2000
From
The Economist Global Agenda
A new
report on the world's forests finds that their destruction has
slowed,
but agreement about how to exploit them in a sustainable way
remains
elusive
THE
most up-to-date survey of the world's forests, to be released on
December
31st by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation
(FAO) ( http://www.fao.org/ ), will once again
draw attention to the
steady
degradation of timberlands, from the tundra to the tropics.
But the
new country-by-country data, the first comprehensive set
since
1990, suggest that deforestation is slowing down. The figures
offer a
glimmer of hope that both government and industry are taking
conservation
more seriously than in the past.
Historically,
the environmental benefits of forests have been
ignored,
as they were cleared for wood and farmland. Countries rich
in
trees - such as Canada, Russia, Brazil and Indonesia -continue to
exploit
their land for timber. But increasingly the ecological role
of
forests is also being recognised. If left undisturbed, forests
filter
water, shelter two-thirds of all known species and absorb
carbon
from the atmosphere. The preservation of forests is now a key
element
in environmental treaties on biological diversity and climate
change.
Dubbed "carbon sinks'' because they also absorb carbon
dioxide,
the most important greenhouse gas implicated in global
warming,
forests were one of the most important, and controversial,
bargaining
chips in the failed talks in The Hague last month over how
to
implement the 1997 Kyoto protocol.
Ironically,
though, the exploitation of forests can also contribute
to
global warming. The logging and burning of timberlands contribute
20-25%
of total carbon emissions, the second most common source of
dangerous
heat-trapping gases after the combustion of fossil fuels.
Massive
man-made forest fires have increased in the past five years,
notably
in Brazil, Indonesia and Russia. And this year in the United
States,
90,000 fires (exacerbated by man's interventions) burned 2.9m
hectares
(7.2m acres), according to the US Forest Service.
Despite
these catastrophes, deforestation overall appears to have
slackened,
according to the FAO report, "Global Forest Resources
Assessment
2000". During the 1980s, an estimated 11.3m hectares of
forested
land were lost each year, an area roughly the size of
Greece.
The FAO now reckons the annual deforestation rate has fallen
by
about 10%. The deforestation rate in developing countries, which
harbour
more than half of all extant forests, was higher (14m
hectares
lost each year between 1990 and 2000). But this destruction
was
partly offset by an increase in tree cover in industrialised
countries.
Are
these figures cause for celebration? Not necessarily. Measuring
tree
cover on a global scale is an imprecise science. A scarcity of
reliable
country data and the difficulty of interpreting satellite
imagery
complicate the FAO's periodic survey, which began in 1947.
The UN
exercise is also politically fraught: forests are a capital
asset,
and member states are not always keen to share information.
Indeed,
some of the national statistics used by the FAO to compile
the
current survey are 10 to 20 years old. Even the definition of
"forest"
is highly contested.
For
these and other reasons, environmentalists caution against
optimism.
Scores of nations, including Britain, have lost their
original
forests and now have little dense tree cover left. Frontier
timberlands
- those relatively untouched - are vanishing rapidly in
Canada,
Siberia and Borneo. Thailand lost a third of its forests in
the
1980s. The United States, too, has seen most of its old-growth
forests
disappear. Saving what is left was a principal environmental
initiative
of Bill Clinton's second presidential term. His parting
gift
will be the banning of new roads and logging in more than a
quarter
of the country's national forests.
The
economic value of US forests lies primarily in recreation, not
timber,
which makes it relatively easy for America to conserve, or
even
expand, its forests. Many developing nations, however, rely on
timber
for scarce export earnings. The rate of deforestation in poor,
mostly
tropical countries remains alarmingly high, and illegal
logging
is rampant, though difficult to quantify. Field surveys
across
Brazil's Amazonia suggest that logging crews and fires
severely
damage 1m hectares a year which are probably not included in
the
FAO's own figures. Forests will remain under threat so long as
global
population expands. There is already fierce competition
between
the need for forests as habitat (to preserve biological
diversity)
and the demand for more crop land and wood fuel.
A
billion poor people depend on forests and remnant woodlands for
their
basic survival, according to the UN.
So are
forests doomed? Probably not, but finding a way to spread
practices
which make the exploitation and development of forests
sustainable
will not be easy. There is no international consensus on
the use
(or misuse) of forests, and they remain at the centre of
myriad
conflicting interests - between indigenous peoples and
multinational
corporations, loggers and environmentalists. The
biggest
conflict of all - between the forest-rich but cash-poor
countries
and the forest-poor, cash-rich ones - bodes ill for
international
dialogue. Will a new UN forum on forests, assembling
for the
first time in the new year, work toward a resolution in the
battle
between cutting and conservation? It is highly unlikely that
Canada,
Brazil and Russia, with more than 70% of the world's forests,
will
ever agree to limits on deforestation. And any treaty to emerge
would
more likely protect trade than trees.
So what
can be done? The World Commission on Forests and Sustainable
Development,
an independent international body assembled after the
1992
earth summit in Rio, has recommended a raft of multilateral
measures
to conserve forests, from the establishment of a "forest
security
council" to certification of wood products derived legally
from
"sustainable" forests. Advocates of certification schemes argue
that
they would help stamp out widespread illegal logging in Brazil,
Indonesia
and Russia. Such a plan might work if adopted by consumers
in the
United States, Japan and Europe, which together buy 60% of all
manufactured
forest goods.
But
global strategies have less chance of success than local and
national
initiatives that focus on the elimination of the perverse
subsidies
that undervalue wood and on more efficient agricultural and
building
techniques to conserve it. If sustainable forestry does
spread,
any success should show up the next time the FAO analyses the
data,
in five years' time.
1999
state of forests report from the FAO >>
http://www.fao.org/forestry/FO/SOFO/sofo-e.stm
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