Forestry Investment Blog

A recently released UN survey reveals that while large scale planting programmes are being carried out in the US and Asia and helping to slow deforestation, farmers are still clearing trees to create farmland at an alarming rate.

The assistant director general for forestry, Eduardo Rojas said that the study of the last decade has shown the first global decrease in deforestation since records began. Forestry experts presenting the study at the Rome headquarters of the UN agency said that successful planting programmes have dramatically slowed the rate of forest loss. Most notable for this are China, India and Vietnam who have cut their rate of forest loss from 8.3 million hectares (20.3 million acres) a year in the 1990’s to 5.2 million hectares (12.8 million acres) per year from 2000 to 2010.

The study also found that Brazil and Indonesia, who had the highest loss of forests in the 1990s, had significantly reduced their deforestation rates. In addition tree planting programmes have added millions of hectares of new forests annually.

A natural contribution to the global forest loss is the severe drought that has been on going in Australia since 2000.

Noting that China’s reforestation program is scheduled to end in 2020, Mette Loyche Wilkie, coordinator of the assessment by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said: “We have a small window of opportunity” to keep reducing the deforestation rate in the coming decade or risk going “back to the high rates of the 1990s.”

In some parts of South America, Africa and Asia there is worry over agribusinesses buying up pristine forests for conversion into farm land. However Wilkie has said that it is unclear how much this factored into the loss of forests for farms. She did comment though that there is another UN study due to be finished by the end of next year, which is aimed at determining the role of these purchases and how they contribute to deforestation.

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 12th, 2010 at 3:40 PM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.