“Even though, globally, the extent of the world’s forest continues to decline… the rate of net forest loss has been cut by over 50 percent”, said the report by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Advertisement
While most developed countries have had high-quality forest monitoring for some time, forest data from many developing countries has often been out of date or incomplete.
The 2015 results were released this week at the World Forestry Congress in Durban, South Africa.
“Forests play a fundamental role in combating rural poverty, ensuring food security and providing decent livelihoods”. And they deliver vital environmental services such as clean air and water, the conservation of biodiversity and combating climate change, said FAO Director-General Jos Graziano da Silva, launching the report in Durban.
Nonetheless, the FAO report notes “a very encouraging tendency towards a reduction in the rates of deforestation and carbon emissions from forests and increases in capacity for sustainable forest management”.
However, between 1990 and 2015, there was a net loss of 129 million hectares of forest.
Its latest stocktake shows the world now has just under four billion hectares of forest, down from 4.1 billion in 1990.
FAOs report stresses the critical importance of forests to people, the environment, and the global economy.
While forests also contributed six to eight percent of Africa’s gross domestic product, she cautioned that forests were not an infinite resource.
Africa and South America had the highest net annual loss of forests in 2010-2015, with 2.8 and 2m hectares respectively, but the report notes how the rate of loss has “substantially decreased” from the previous five year period. Most of this loss occurs in the tropics. With a team of co-authors over the past year, I have worked with the Food and Agriculture Organisation to analyse data on forest area and area change, comparing climatic domains (tropical, sub-tropical, temperate and boreal), geographical regions and country income categories.
However, a significant portion of the slowdown in deforestation is not due to conservation, but rather to a vast increase of planted forest areas.
The 2015 assessment also includes data on forest ecosystem condition and productivity, carbon stocks, sustainable forest management, designation for different uses and economic and social benefits of forests. They also protect soils from erosion, avalanches and landslides. Unlike FAO data, which is only published every five years, the Global Forest Watch data does not distinguish between natural forests, primary forests, or timber plantations, although the platform includes layers that enable users to filter areas in some countries by different types of forest use.
Brazil (984,000 ha per year), Indonesia (684,000 ha per year) and Nigeria (410,000 ha per year) had the largest net forest loss between 2010 and 2015.
“Important challenges remain. The existence of sound policies, legislation and regulation is not always coupled with effective incentives or enforcement”, the FAO said.
Significant strides have been made when it comes to designating forests as protected areas: Some additional 150 million hectares of forest lands have been granted that status since 1990.
“But the good news is that it’s happening at a rate that is half of what it was in the 1990s”.
Dlamini-Zuma said forests and woodlands covered 21% of Africa’s land surface.
“Countries have more knowledge of their forest resources than ever before and as a result we have a better picture of global forest change”.
Advertisement
Pic above courtesy of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), depicting the rain forest in Sabah, a state of Malaysia, on the island of Borneo.
