Experts debate world forest crisis

Experts debate world forest crisis

By John Madeley

Suffocating fires in the Pacific may have caught the
headlines, but rapidly advancing deforestation is a tragedy of
global proportions, according to a new report. As a major
forestry meeting gets underway in Turkey, John Madeley in London
asks if such discussions can really help to remedy the problem.

LONDON: The forest fires still raging across Indonesia are
only the latest development in a worsening crisis which has seen
tropical deforestation rise by two million hectares (4.9m acres)
per year since the 1980s, delegates at a major international
forestry conference in Turkey have been told.

More than 70 ministers of forestry met informally in Antalya
Monday to assess global responses to the crisis, which has seen
Asia lose 88 percent of its original forest cover. As well as the
ministerial gathering, over 3,000 delegates from 120 countries
have converged on the Turkish city for the 11th World Forestry
Conference, which began on Monday 13th and runs until Oct. 22.

They are calling into question current strategies for
combating the escalating problem. Meeting under the title
"Forestry for Sustainable Development: Towards the 21st Century",
delegates have submitted 1,400 papers to the congress.

Questions about the number of trees that had to be felled to
provide the paper for the 10-day event are unlikely to be asked -
but as fires continue to blight Indonesia, doubts have been
raised whether such discussions can do much to stop the rot in
any case.

According to a new World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) report,
around 17 million hectares (41.5m acres) of tropical forest are
now lost each year, compared with 15 million hectares (36.6m
acres) in the 1980s. And the problem could get worse: only 5
percent of Asia's remaining forest is currently protected.

Europe has lost 62 percent of its original forest, says the
WWF, and Costa Rica, Malaysia, Pakistan and Thailand will have
virtually no forest left in 50 years if the current rate of
deforestation continues.

"In one generation we are facing the almost complete loss of
natural forest," warns Francis Sullivan, the WWF's chief forest
campaigner.

The principal causes of forest depletion are logging for
domestic and export purposes, the axing or burning of forest to
make way for plantations like palm oil or cattle ranches, and
slash-and-burn clearance by local people seeking land to grow
food.

They do not have the tools or machinery to clear away primary
forest, but are forced by poverty and landlessness into wooded
areas after the largest trees have gone.

Despite the publicity given to the Indonesian fires, it is
Brazil which has suffered the greatest loss. More fires have been
reported in Brazil this year than ever before, said the WWF.

Governments of countries at risk from further forest fires
must take steps now to avoid them, according to Dr. Nigel Sizer
of the Washington-based World Resources Institute. "These include
cracking down on illegal logging and unlawful forest clearing
activities, installing appropriate fire prevention measures, and
carefully planning further expansion of logging activities to
ensure that environmental and social needs are also met," he
says.

But ministers meeting Monday stressed the diversity of
responses that would be required in different countries, and
sought to guarantee the sovereignty of individual states involved
in any international efforts to protect the remaining trees.

-- The Guardian