Progress too slow on saving tropical forests: report

Yahoo News 7 Jun 11;

PARIS (AFP) – All but seven percent of the world's tropical forests are "managed poorly or not at all" despite efforts to boost sustainability, according to a major report released Tuesday.

Forces driving forest destruction across four continents -- including rising food and fuel prices, and growing demand for timber -- threaten to overwhelm future conservation efforts, warned the 420-page study by the Japan-based International Tropical Timber Organisation (ITTO), an intergovernmental agency group that promotes sustainable use of forests.

"Less than 10 percent of all forests are sustainably managed, and we expect deforestation to continue," said Steven Johnson, ITTO's communications director.

"The economic rationale is just so compelling. Revenue streams coming from standing forests just can't compete against conversion to agriculture or biofuel crops, pasture land for livestock, or palm oil plantation," he said by phone.

Tropical forests play an essential role in Earth's carbon cycle, absorbing about a quarter of CO2 emissions generated by human activity.

Deforestation, which releases stored carbon, accounts for 10 to 20 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions globally.

Forests are also a lifeline for nearly a billion people around the world living at or close to subsistence.

The report, "Status of Tropical Forest Management 2011," covers 33 countries and about 90 percent of global trade in tropical timber, and presents itself as the most comprehensive assessment of its kind ever conducted.

So-called "natural permanent tropical forest" currently stand at 761 million hectares (1,880 million acres) worldwide, it estimates, with just over half "production forest," and the rest "protection forest."

The good news is that the area under sustainable management has grown by 50 percent in five years to 53 million hectares (134 million acres), equivalent to the surface of Thailand or Spain.

But these gains must be stacked against the millions of hectares (acres) of tropical forests cleared each year for crops, pastures or development, the report cautioned.

Tropical forests 'better managed'
Richard Black BBC News 7 Jun 11;

The world's tropical forests are better managed now than five years ago, concludes a survey by the International Tropical Timber Organisation (ITTO).

The area under some form of sustainable management plan increased by about 50% over the period; but about 90% of tropical forest lacks protection.

The most significant improvements have been seen in Africa, the report says.

The ITTO is a pro-sustainable use trade body whose 60 member countries account for 90% of the global timber trade.

Its current report - Status of Tropical Forest Management 2011 - analysed data from 33 important forest countries, including the really big players such as Brazil, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia.

"The top line is that the area under sustainable forest management has gone up from 36 to 53 million hectares in five years," said Duncan Poore, one of the report's authors and a former head of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

"That's a substantial improvement, but there's still a long way to go," he told BBC News.

"Forests scheduled by ITTO members as permanent forest cover 760m hectares - so what's under sustainable management is less than 10%, which is disappointing."
Deforestation 'to continue'

Countries that have made major increases in protection include Bolivia, Brazil, Cameroon, Congo, Gabon, Peru and Venezuela.

However, satellite observations recently revealed an alarming escalation in deforestation in Brazil, indicating that loss of forest in some areas of a country can continue even as protection increases in other areas.

"My personal view is that it's more important to make sure that countries decide what forest they want to keep and for what purpose, and look after that satisfactorily, than to weep crocodile tears over deforestation," said Dr Poore.

"The reality is that in most countries, deforestation is going to continue. But if they look after areas that are really important ecologically, that may not be a problem."

The ITTO report makes clear that pressures leading to forest clearance are continuing to rise, with the expansion of the world's population, growing use of raw materials such as wood, and increasing demand for land on which to settle and grow food.

The big hope of many in the conservation community is that rich countries may soon start funding poorer ones to protect forests in the interests of absorbing carbon dioxide and curbing climate change.

But despite years of discussion, establishment of an international mechanism for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) remains elusive, largely because of wider disagreements within the UN climate convention.

Bringing a REDD scheme into existence would, said Dr Poore, be "very important" for the long-term health of tropical forests.

Food Demand Eating Into Tropical Forests: Report
Gerard Wynn PlanetArk 8 Jun 11;

Slowing deforestation and greater awareness of the value of standing trees may come too late to save the world's biggest rainforests, according to a global assessment of tropical forests published Tuesday.

Tropical forests are threatened by pressures to clear land to produce food and biofuels and to plant fast-growing trees for timber, wood fuel and paper.

Awareness was growing in tropical countries of consumer demands, especially in western countries, for wood harvested sustainably, but perhaps not fast enough to counter growing world demand for food, said Duncan Poore, co-author of the report and former head of the World Conservation Union (IUCN).

"There's been an extraordinary change of attitude and culture. They may not be practicing it, or able to because of a lack of funds, but they know it's there," said Poore.

But he was not optimistic for the fate of the biggest areas of rainforest in Brazil, Indonesia and central Africa.

"The fundamental point is that conserving forests is not as lucrative as converting to other uses. When you consider the increase in consumption in China, India it's a very alarming prospect," he said, referring to demand to convert forests to farms for food and biofuels.

The global area of permanent, natural tropical forests, either protected or harvested for indigenous tree species, was likely to continue to fall in the medium term, said the report, "Status of tropical forest management 2011."

CONCERNS

The report was published by the international agency for monitoring and promoting sustainable management, the Japan-based International Tropical Timber Organization.

It expressed concerns about weak law enforcement, inadequate funds for forest protection, poor data on forest management and uncertain forest tenure rights.

The total area of permanent, natural tropical forest in 2010 was 761 million hectares, of which 403 million hectares was managed, for example to harvest indigenous tree species for timber, and 358 million hectares protected.

The area managed using sustainable practices had increased slightly, it said, to about 53 million hectares from 36 million hectares in 2010 compared with 2005.

A sharp fall in the protected area over that period in particular in Brazil and India was likely mostly because of accounting changes, it said.

Deforestation rates generally from 2005-2010 were below 1 percent, it found, but much higher in particular countries and especially in Togo and Nigeria.

That supported a report by the U.N.'s food agency, which found the rate of destruction of the world's three largest forests fell 25 percent this decade compared with the previous one, but remained alarmingly high in some countries.

In the long-run, a proposed system of payments to tropical countries for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) may place a higher value on standing trees compared with chopping them down, Tuesday's report said.

But that proposal has become bogged down in U.N. climate talks locked in wrangling over sharing greenhouse gas emissions cuts between industrialized and emerging economies.

(Editing by Janet Lawrence)