UN report says tropical forests still shrinking
Date: 04-Oct-01
Country: SWITZERLAND
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.
