articlehighlights

Deforestation is causing a dramatic decline in:

• wood for industrial use, fuel and other human needs
• the ability of forests to balance climate changes
• natural habitats and biodiversity
• quality of life, particularly in areas of degraded land

March 2001

Amazon deforested area, in the State of Pará, Brazil. Photographer: Leonardo F. Freitas, Creative Commons

All signs indicate that we do not have enough forests on the globe to fulfill all the current and future demands (in a broad sense) on global forests. There may not be a physical shortage of forests, but the different kinds of demands will be difficult to meet simultaneously. A review of the scientific literature indicates that the following points must be highlighted:

Current forest resources

• Shortage of industrial roundwood: Studies show that there will probably be a rather substantial regional shortages of industrial roundwood already by 2010 and a global shortage of industrial coniferous roundwood by 2010.^10,18,21

• Dramatic shortage of fuelwood and charcoal: Currently, all signs indicate that there will be a crucial shortage of accessible fuelwood and charcoal. This shortage will limit socioeconomic development in the developing world. However, there are great uncertainties in current estimates on demand for and supply of fuelwood and charcoal. There is an urgent need to start global analyses of the fuelwood situation based on a bottom-up approach.

• Continued increases of deforestation and degeneration in the tropics: All signs show a dramatic increased loss of forest resources and degeneration in the tropics. It can only be concluded that countermeasures taken against deforestation have been insufficient. There are also many uncertainties connected with the rate of future degradation and degeneration of the forests.^{3,8,9,24,25,33}

Human activity impacts

• Rapid development of industrial plantations: In 1995 the industrial plantation area was estimated to be 103 million ha and the non-industrial plantation area to be 20 million ha. Over 50% of the plantations are assessed to be less than 15 years and 25% are less than five years.^7,34 The establishment of new plantations is assumed to increase between 160 and 235 million ha in year 2050.⁷ Around 2030 the industrial wood supply from plantations is estimated to be 45% of the total consumption of industrial wood compared to 22% in 1997. Thus, the above-identified regional and global shortages of wood supply would be much worse without the establishment of plantations.^4,18

• Increased usage of recovered paper and non-wood fibers: The usage of recovered paper and non-wood fibers will continue to increase. But this increased usage will probably not improve the regional and global shortages of fibers identified in the foreseeable future.

• Dramatic land-use changes will continue: Dramatic land-use changes will continue to seriously affect forest resources. These changes will influence deforestation rates, fiber supplies, fuelwood supplies, and supplies of non-wood products and functions.³

• Non-wood demands will continue to grow: “New” demands, such as lifecycle approaches, biodiversity, environmental protection, water, hunting, ecotourism, and recreation, will continue to grow. A serious problem with these demands is that few attempts have been made to analyze their impacts on other forest functions and socioeconomic developments. Studies on these aspects are urgently needed.⁶

• The degradation of land will continue: There are some 1.2 billion hectares of moderately to extremely degraded land on the globe. The continuation of this degeneration process is due to several different factors. Restoration of degraded lands requires that efforts focus on huge areas of tree-cover plantations and closed forests. Efforts made so far are insufficient.

Managing and collecting data

• Uncertainties in the roundwood supply estimates: Only rough estimates exist on what the global exploitable forest can and will produce in the form of roundwood in the future. The estimates for major supply regions vary as much as 100% according to reliable analysts. The rate of increment in the main regions is still uncertain. There are substantial problems with the reliability of the growth data, not only in the developing world but also in the developed world.^1,32

• Two regions hold the keys to the industrial roundwood balance: Plantations in the Southern Hemisphere are crucial to balancing the global supply of non-coniferous fibers. Many questions remain on the outlook for plantations in the Southern Hemisphere. Russia holds the key to balancing the global supply of coniferous forests. But two questions remain unanswered: Can and will Russia develop its enormous inventory of coniferous forests?²²

• Forestry’s role in the climate change process is uncertain: The prospects for improving the carbon balance through plantations, improved silviculture, and replacement of fossil fuels by wood are rather bright. Much research is going into this field, but limited actions based on future climate concerns have been implemented. A new mechanism is required if forests are to play a crucial role in balancing future climate changes.

• Increased forest production will improve the global environment: Based on the reviews in this paper, it can be concluded that the largest global environmental problem connected to forestry is probably the limitations of forest production. Similar conclusions have been made by some environmentalists.¹⁶ It is also probable that, for global forests to play a crucial role in the lifecycle, society will require increased forest production.

• Lack of data, knowledge, and consistent overview: There is a serious lack of data, knowledge and consistent overviews of the items on the global forestry agenda.³² Analyses and understanding on how the different items on the agenda interact at large-scale levels are also lacking.

  • The World Bank states “immediate action is needed to make forest monitoring reliable and more than a once-a-decade event.”³⁵
  • The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) points out that there is an urgent need to conduct “studies on a global basis concerning areas under the risk of biodiversity losses.”¹⁷

Given that efforts are underway to set internal forestry policy, it is rather astonishing that so much data and knowledge are still missing. International organizations such as the FAO and the World Bank and aid organizations such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), and Finnida (a Finnish aid organization) have pumped billions of dollars into forestry activities over the decades, and yet we cannot answer some of the most basic questions concerning global forest resources and their functions.

There is obviously a need for a new approach in international forestry.

Is current international policy adequate?

• Forestry policy, to a large extent, is now set at the international level. In many cases it is carried out through international political negotiations and it often follows the Precautionary Principle.^20,23
• International Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are playing a major role; they are attempting to achieve a New Global Governance Agenda that increases the power of new international bodies and decreases national power.^14,28 As a result of these new trends, actions taken are often based on incomplete information, and the consequences they may have on national and global forest resources, forest functions, and socioeconomic developments are seldom analyzed in advance.²⁷

Environmental issues in forestry have also become a springboard to broader social and political concerns often rarely considered in any other sector.²⁸ This may be a positive development if we take into account certain events.

• In 1978 the World Forestry Congress stated that “forests are for the people.”
• The World Bank concluded that one of the purposes of the Earth Summit in Rio was to give people the right to different environmental functions of the earth. Some have defined sustainable forestry to mean “all things to all people.”^30,31
• Cousteau says the goal of civilization is to ensure to all a certain “quality of life,” adjoined by a fundamental “joy of living.”¹³

But there is an inconsistency in the international environmental organizations’ attempts at policy setting. Even if they speak about broader social and political concerns in connection with environmental forestry issues, their actions are mainly based on pure environmental values. There are also inconsistencies in the policy setting by governments concerning natural resources. There are concessions to the environmental values, but the policies are driven mainly by traditional macroeconomic criteria (mainly gross domestic product — GDP), which only measure the produced assets and do not consider human resources and natural capital. Recently, the global society has started to question the traditional GDP criterion. “If GDP is up, why is America down?”¹¹ “The issue is whether we have indicators that are relevant to people’s needs.”²⁶ Similar concerns have been expressed in The Economist ¹⁵ and by Becker⁵.

Recently, the World Bank made a major breakthrough by merging the different values in society.²⁹

• The Bank has incorporated human resources and natural capital criteria in its evaluation of wealth and has arrived at tentative results.
• From the 192 countries studied, the World Bank has concluded that produced assets (manufactured capital) represent only 16-20% of the wealth. Manufactured capital has, to a large extent, directed policy setting on natural resources.

In order for different international organizations to make a solid contribution to forestry policy-setting and to the future of society there is a need for critical thinking on which roles the international organizations should play in this process and how they should contribute to the policy-setting.¹⁹

Thus, the environment is only part of the problem. The other parts are jobs, the quality of life, and so on and they are all connected at the same points: the governance of the resources.^2,12

The challenge

How much forest do we need? What types of forests do we need? Where should they be located? These are questions that need to be addressed objectively, taking into account human resources, produced assets, and natural capital. Only then can we establish solid policies for forests and for society.

Who or which organization will take on this challenge?

© February 1996, International Union of Forest Research Organization (IUFRO), excerpts from “IUFRO Occasional Paper No. 5.” © 2001, American Institute of Biological Sciences, excerpts updated by the author for this web site. See reprint policy.

Do We Have Enough Forests?

• Check out a list of BioScience articles about sustainability and our future.
• Check out a list of evolution-education-related articles from the pages of BioScience.
• Check out some thematically grouped articles, hand picked by the editors of BioScience, at the AIBS webstore.

BioScience Article

“Ecosystem Thinking in the Northern Forest—and Beyond.”
In this BioScience article (June 2009), Likens and Franklin discuss environmental impacts of forests in the United States and Canada, including acid rain, fragmentation of landscapes, mercury and salt pollution of water resources, invasive alien species and diseases, and climate change. They also propose actions to protect and restore the vital ecosystem functions of the Northern Forest Ecoregion. Read the abstract, or log in to read the full article.
http://caliber.ucpress.net/doi/abs/10.1525/bio.2009.59.6.9

Conservation from the treetops

Read another forestry article on our site; this one is about canopy ecology by Bruce Rinker.
https://scienceinstyle.com/environment/rinker.html

Man of Trees

A web site devoted to Richard St. Barbe Baker, the world’s greatest forester, responsivle for the planting of more trees that anyone else in history.
http://www.manofthetrees.org/

Forests in your region

Clicking a region on the world map will give you information about the status of that region’s forests, from the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.
http://www.fao.org/forestry/site/countryinfo/en/

Forest Conservation Portal

News, action alerts, information, and searchable database of Internet links.
http://forests.org/

World Forest Institute

“Access to information on international markets, new products, evolving technologies, wood species & characteristics, and emerging trends in forestry.” A program of World Forestry Center.
http://wfi.worldforestrycenter.org/index.html

Global Forest Watch

Offers interactive maps and data on worldwide deforestation
http://www.globalforestwatch.org/english/index.htm

World Resources Institute

A unique opportunity for the general public to see through modern imagery technology a clearer picture of the threats to the world’s forests.
http://www.wri.org/gfw/

Center for International Earth Science Information Network

A non-profit, non-governmental organization that provides information to policy-makers, scientists, and the general public about issues in our changing world.
http://www.ciesin.columbia.edu/index.html

World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development

10 recommendations for sustaining the world’s forests from the final report of the WCFSD.
http://www.iisd.org/wcfsd/

The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)

A non-governmental research organization located in Austria. The institute conducts inter-disciplinary scientific studies on environmental, economic, technological and social issues in the context of human dimensions of global change.
http://www.iiasa.ac.at/

Forest Action Network

An activist organization involved in protecting the world’s forest resources.
http://www.fanweb.org/

World Rainforest Movement

Check out campaigns to save forests with information that is organized by subject and country.
http://www.wrm.org.uy/

New Forests Project

People-based, direct-action effort concentrates on combating the destructive logging and deforestation in international developing countries.
http://www.newforestsproject.org/

Native Forest Network

This global effort aims to conserve forests by promoting alternatives to endangered trees, educating about mill pollution, and saving public lands. Action alerts are also provided.
http://www.nativeforest.org/action_alerts/index.htm

Legal defense for conservation

This non-profit environmental law firm offers several ways for you to help the cause to protect forests and other ecosystems.
http://www.wildlaw.org/

Buy FSC approved lumber

The Forest Stewardship Council, an international group that promotes good stewardship and management of forests, explains what to look for when buying lumber to support the cause.
http://www.fsc.org/

Global Forest Watch

Offers interactive maps and data on worldwide deforestation.
http://www.globalforestwatch.org/english/index.htm

Open workshops/forums

Several general forest workshops and open forums on the state of forests and GM trees.
http://www.elonmerkki.net/forestforum/uk/ff2.html