10/04/01 -- Tropical Forests Still Shrinking

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FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY

Tropical Forests Still Shrinking

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10/04/01

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org

A major new report entitled "State of the World's Forests 2001" from

the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has found that over the

past decade an average of 37.6 million acres (15.2 million hectares)

of virgin tropical forest - equal to 0.8 percent of the total area -

had been cleared every year. Temperate forest cover is actually

growing in many areas, but with much replacement of natural forests

with plantations. This continual loss and diminishment of global

forests is a catastrophe that threatens to destroy the ecological

systems and processes upon which all life is dependent. Rainforest

loss and resultant growing ecosystem collapse are a security threat

from which there is no recovery, ever, unless the problem is addressed

head on - and soon.

The FAO report makes conventional recommendations that are too

conservative and based upon tinkering status quo reforms, urging

better monitoring and sternly warning that logging bans are

counterproductive. Much more ambitious policies are going to be

required if the World's forest heritage if to be forever protected.

These include a moratorium on all logging of ancient old-growth

forests until scientifically adequate preserved areas are established,

logging is reduced in scale and intensity to be ecologically

sustainable, and adequate financing is made available.

The World's international organizations such as the World Bank and

FAO seem to be good gathers of forest conservation information and can

diagnose the problems well. However, both are failing miserably to

outline ambitious policies that are likely to succeed and are adequate

to stem global deforestation and simplification. We must go beyond

tried and failed policy prescriptions that show no chance of

conserving forests - and be willing to challenge the legitimacy of

continued logging of ancient old-growth forests. Until these

organizations and the World's governments do, forest loss will

continue no matter how many reform or monitoring programs are enacted.

Commercial scale logging of old-growth forests never has, nor ever

will, meaningfully conserve natural, intact and fully operational

forests. No amount of independent certification or monitoring can

change this ecological fact.

The "State of the World's Forests 2001" from the FAO can be found at:

http://www.fao.org/forestry/fo/sofo/SOFO2001/sofo2001-e.stm

g.b.

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ITEM #1

Title: UN report says tropical forests still shrinking

Date: October 4, 2001

GENEVA - The world's tropical forests are shrinking fast despite

international conservation efforts, the U.N. agriculture agency said

yesterday.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said over the past decade

an average of 37.6 million acres (15.2 million hectares) of virgin

tropical forest - equal to 0.8 percent of the total area - had been

cleared every year.

"The worldwide loss has continued at much the same rate over the past

20 years," FAO Assistant Director-General Hosny El-Lakany told

a news conference coinciding with the release of a report entitled

"The State of the World's Forests 2001".

But worldwide, the loss of forest area had slowed with net growth

registered in non-tropical areas, particularly Europe and Russia, the

FAO report said.

Despite an international commitment to the sustainable development

of forests, made in 1992 at a United Nations summit on the

environment in Rio de Janeiro, some 93 percent of the area cleared

of tropical forest was being converted to other land uses, mainly

agriculture, the report said.

It said the situation was most serious in Africa and South America,

with Brazil still clearing the largest amount of tropical forest.

But the FAO warned against simplistic solutions such as bans on

logging, saying these often transferred the problem to another

country.

"The decision to use bans should be based on a thorough analysis of

their potential effects and of alternative means to achieve the same

results," it said.

The report said efforts to improve forest management could only be

successful if "forest crime and corruption" were reduced - such as

selling illegal contracts and felling protected trees.

"Illegal and corrupt activities threaten the world's forests in many

countries, particularly but not exclusively in forest-rich developing

countries," it said.

Ways to combat such activities were improved monitoring systems,

simpler laws and their strict enforcement, it said.

The world has an estimated 3,870 million hectares of forest, of which

almost 95 percent is natural, non-planted woodland.

ITEM #1

Title: Forests rapidly disappearing in tropics but growing in Europe:

UN agency

Date: October 3, 2001

GENEVA, Oct 3, (AFP) - Forests are disappearing at a rapid rate in

tropical countries but are on the increase in Europe where they help

to protect biodiversity and provide jobs, said a new report published

in Geneva on Wednesday by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation

(FAO).

But the biggest threat to successful forest management is corruption

and illegal forest practices, the FAO said in its biannual report,

State of the World's Forests 2001.

"During the 1990s, the loss of natural forests was 16.1 million

hectares per year, of which 15.2 million occurred in the tropics", the

organisation explained. Deforestation was highest in Africa and

South America.

The organisation said the major cause for the loss and degradation of

natural forests was conversion to other land uses and to agriculture

in particular.

Only one million hectares of this lost land was later re-used for

forest plantations, it said.

"The countries with the highest net loss of forest area between 1990

and 2000 were Argentina, Brazil, the Democratic Republic of Congo,

Indonesia, Myanmar, Mexico, Nigeria, Sudan, Zambia and Zimbabwe," said

the report.

Elsewhere, however, natural forests have been growing at a rate of 3.6

million hectares a year, mainly in non-tropical countries, it said.

"Forest expansion has been occurring for several decades in many

industrialised countries, especially where agriculture is no longer

an economically viable land use," the FAO said.

The report particularly aimed to debunk various myths about the state

of European forests which it said were now expanding by about 880

thousand hectares a year.

It pointed out that Russia's forest area was the world's largest at

851 million hectares, a fifth of the global total.

In the rest of Europe, it said: "Forests cover about 38 percent of the

land area, conserving biodiversity, protecting against erosion and

providing employment, recreation, wood and a wide range of other goods

and services, many of them not yet economically valued.

"This counteracts their relative lack of importance in conventional

GDP calculations," it said.

In terms of area, the biggest net gains of forest were in China,

Belarus, Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation and the United States.

In many cases, these were boosted by specific plantation policies.

Out of a total of 3.1 million hectares of forest planted each year,

1.2 million was in non-tropical areas.

But the report warned that efforts to improve forest management will

only be successful by fighting crime and corruption. "Illegal and

corrupt activities threaten the world's forests in many countries,

particularly but not exclusively in forest-rich developing countries,"

it said.

And in some cases, the FAO claimed illegal logging and trade appeared

to be growing as a consequence of trade liberalization and

globalization.

It listed a range of illegal forest practices such as the approval of

illegal contracts with private enterprises by public servants, the

harvesting of protected trees by commercial corporations and the

smuggling of forest products across borders.

High timber values, low government official salaries and a large

number of poorly-designed regulations are amongst other factors which

the FAO said create a favourable environment for forest crime and

corruption.

Other factors which the report cited for loss of natural forests

include atmospheric pollution, high winds and drought which have

contributed to a range of severe fires across the world.

Regarding bans and restrictions on commercial logging, the report said

they had contributed to conservation in some countries but in others

"they have negatively affected the forest sector and local communities

or have simply transferred the problem of overharvesting to other

countries."

Sustainable forest management and forest certification, however, was

gaining momentum, according to the report, with an estimated 12

percent of the world's forests under protected area status.

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