IUCN 23 Nov 09;
Land areas around the world, bigger than Canada, have been identified as having potential to be restored to good quality, healthy forests, a new study has found.
As the global effort to help tackle climate change by reversing the earth’s alarming loss of forests steps up, scientists using sophisticated satellite mapping have produced a world map identifying areas in which more than a billion hectares of former forest land and degraded forest land has restoration potential.
That’s about six per cent of the planet’s total land area. Restoring forests to some of these lands could be achieved without prejudicing other vital land uses, such as food production. The Global Partnership on Forest Restoration (GPFLR) says that the needs and rights of indigenous peoples and others who are dependent on forests must be respected when considering restoration projects. GPFLR will now work with individual countries and local communities to deliver restoration where communities benefit.
“With a global population already approaching seven billion, and forecast to increase to more than eight billion by 2025, the pressure on all of our natural resources is immense,” says Tim Rollinson, Chairman of the GPFLR and Director-General of the British Forestry Commission. “At the same time, the Earth’s forests continue to shrink, and what’s left is increasingly being degraded. We know how to restore forests and make them sustainable. We now also know where we should do it, so we should be getting on with it.”
The findings were announced today in London at an international meeting of the GPFLR, of which IUCN and the Forestry Commission of Great Britain are founding members. The assessment has revealed that the potential to restore the world’s lost forests is much greater than the previous estimate of 850 million hectares.
The GPFLR partners say that forest restoration can have a significant impact on climate change as well as improving lives, and that urgent action on restoration should be taken hand in hand with efforts to stop the continuing global loss and degradation of forests. Preliminary analysis indicates that by 2030 the restoration of degraded forest lands will make the same contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gases as that which could be expected from avoided deforestation (70 Gt of CO² emissions) and perhaps as much as twice that amount. The GPFLR will work with countries over the next year to clarify and refine these figures on a country by country basis.
“Forest restoration experiences around the world provide evidence that, while it is impossible to replace a pristine forest once it’s gone, many of the functions it originally provided can be restored,” says Stewart Maginnis, Director of IUCN Environment and Development Group. “Forests provide such vital services, like clean water and fresh air, that we can win on all fronts by bringing them back to life. We need to protect the forests we have left, and restore what we’ve lost.”
Forest Area Bigger Than Canada Can Be Restored
Nina Chestney, PlanetArk 27 Nov 09;
LONDON - Only one fifth of the world's forests remain but an area bigger than Canada could be restored without harming food production, a global alliance dedicated to restoring forests said on Thursday.
A study by the Global Partnership on Forest Landscape Restoration (GPFLR), which includes the WWF, Britain's Forestry Commission and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), said a billion hectares of former forests, equivalent to six percent of the world's total land area, could be restored.
Previous assessments estimated 850 million hectares had restoration potential.
"This is a first go at identifying the total scale of this opportunity. The next stage is to work at a country level to identify what we would restore in the real world," Tim Rollinson, GPFLR chairman and director general of the British Forestry Commission told Reuters in an interview.
Marginal agricultural land, where productivity was low, had the most potential for restoration, the study found.
"There are opportunities in almost every continent. The most potential is in Africa; there are substantial areas in China and India, as well as parts of Brazil," William Jackson, IUCN's deputy director general.
Britain could also do its part. Planting 30,000 football pitches' worth of trees per year could cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 10 percent by 2050, a British Forestry Commission report said on Wednesday.
NO TIME TO WASTE
It is estimated that 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions come from deforestation and agriculture.
World leaders are meeting at a U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen in less than two weeks and there are fears that deforestation and agriculture issues will be at the bottom of a long list of responses to climate change to be discussed.
"There is a danger deforestation will get pushed down the agenda in Copenhagen," Jackson said.
By 2030, the restoration of degraded forest land could make a 70 gigatonne cut in greenhouse gases -- the same as from avoided deforestation -- or even twice that amount, based on preliminary estimates in the report.
Investment in mangrove and woodland restoration is worthwhile, achieving rates of return up to 40 percent, a United Nations Environment Programme report said this month.
Forests once covered more than 50 percent of the world's land area. That has declined to less than 30 percent due to unsustainable logging and conversion to other land uses such as grazing, industry, towns and cities, the GPFLR report said.
The rate of deforestation outstrips restoration. The world lost 7 million hectares a year of forests between 2000 and 2005.
"The rate of deforestation has been slowing, but hasn't been going down. Rising agicultural commodity prices and biofuels could drive a new wave. Do you squeeze more productivity out of a hectare of land or do you need more land? That's the dilemma," Jackson said.
(Editing by James Jukwey)
