Feb 11th 2011, 11:01 by The Economist online
The state of the world's forests
THE Food & Agriculture Organisation, a UN body, estimates that the world's forests covered 4.03 billion hectares in 2010. Although the world as a whole continues to lose forests, the annual rate of deforestation in the past decade has fallen to 5.2m hectares, compared with 8.3m hectares a year between 1990 and 2000. Some large countries, including China and India, increased their forest cover between 2000 and 2010. China’s increased at an average annual rate of 1.6%, while India’s went up by 0.5% a year. Norway and Sweden have also added forests over the past decade. With forests covering nearly 70% of its area in 2010, Sweden is one of the world’s most sylvan countries. Nigeria, by contrast, has been chopping its forests down at a rate of 3.7% a year. By last year only one-tenth of its land remained forested.
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China's statistic is theoretic, not all realistic.
But I do feel in most of the cities, the environment has become much much better than ten years ago. There are also a lot more good-looking forest. But sometimes the forest has been wild and natural, only not looking good, I don't find it not green.
Good to see India in positive territory, suprised to see Australia in the negative territory, and sad to see Peru following (I take it the third with the Rain Forest is getting cut down, or are folks actually deforesting the alto plano?)
Just curious has the rate of decline slowed for Brazil and Indonesia (two high profile cases I believe in the ecology world)?
Otherwise, where does the UK stand? I say this a bit tongue in cheek, because every eco-show seems to have an alarmist, sanctimonous narrator or figure providing exposition with a Bitish accent (Received Pronounciation maybe)....
China is doing a lot to actually build up forest. Years ago when I went back to my home town, the local government was paying people to give up their land for the forest building plan. And once you give up land, you will receive rice from the government for years, which gives the period for you to adapt into a city---for example.
Again, as I may expect, people would say that it's not perfect. But as we see, it's somehow efficient.
One point to be noted is how each country defines what a forest is. What is a "forest" in one country is not "forest" in another. In China the majority of the growth is from the "wooded" areas which are not really forests in the classic sense.
The density of trees in the forest is also another important parameter. You can still have a "forest" with lesser density of trees.
Overall the tree growth rate may be much worse than the growth in forest areas
Brazilian deforestation rates have fallen to an all time low record (-60% compared to the average of the period 2000-2010). It is a combination of better public policy to the region, better monitoring and important private actions, such as the Soy Moratorium (in which the industry agreed not to buy soy from deforestaded areas). The main reason for deforestation is still poverty and lack of land tenure in region. The country has a target to halt loss of forested areas by 2020. With that, the country will still have one of the greatest percentage of the territory intact (it is specially impresive for such a big country), while still being an agricultural superpower and a leader in renewable energy (currently 47% of the brazilian energy matrix comes from renewable sources).
It is also interesting to mention that, if we look at the Mata Atlantica rainforest area in Sao Paulo state (one of the oldest occupation areas in the country in which only 15% of its native cover is preserved), forested area is actually increasing.
There are still some problems but those are all good news. In a few years time the country will be in the news pages as an environmental superpower and not a vilain. It is already happening in the specialized midia.
China's tree-hugging behavior is baffling when we see that beside, Chinese industries are monstruous polluters in the world. Unfortunately, this trend is not going to falter as increasingly chinese city-dwellers plan to purchase a car. Reforesting hectares of land is maybe a nice gimmickry to boast a dynamic willingness but also to ease the rulers' conscious. In order to offset the huge amounts of pollution billowing away from industrial furnaces, what's better than involving in reforestation schemes ?
However, it's pleasing to see China implicated in such an environmentally-friendly project. I only hope that such a relevant policy won't be dumped in the coming years and that the "green" effort of foresting wide swathes of land will be pursued eagerly and effectively.
Environmental news that doesn't depress me. What a pleasant surprise!
@TheGrimReaper
I for one disagree that the Chinese renewable energy effort is a smokescreen. I believe that it stems from a legitimate attempt at energy autarky, China doesn't like to depend on any foriegn power for anything, especially not something as key to their continued success as the vast energy required to sustain a modernization and growth in the manufacturing base.
This is not to say that their pursuit of renewable energy is a tree-hugger's dream, either. Their drive is for independance, not stewardship of the planet, they see renewable energy as a national security issue - but this sometimes comes at the cost of truly environmental concerns - see the three gorges dam for instance.
One thing people tend to ignore is the destination of the wood that is cut from those forests. It does not stay in the countries where it is cut from.
The most valuable lumber goes straight to rich countries. Europe is probably the biggest market for high quality wood.
An US research about city pollution on tree growth reveals a surprising finding. The tree grows better and faster in polluted cities than wild.
Not all forests are created equal when it comes to value for the environment. The conifers of Sweeden and Norway do little to absorb CO2. Little better are the fast-growing softwoods that China is planting in orderly rows around its new coal power plants. It's the primeval rainforests of Brazil, Peru, Colombia, and Indonesia that are the "lungs of the planet", and we're still losing those. Still, it's nice to see an iota of progress.
Recommend this comment if you don't trust a single data point produced by the Chinese Government.
@The Gatsby wrote
What a fantastic proof about who is good at brain-washing!
Indonesia has the government backed policy of transplanting Javanese into the territories of indigenous people on other islands to take away their land and converted for agricultural used. Large parts of Borneo have already been slashed and burned for this purpose. I do not see why no government or intergovernmental body has taken steps to criticize Indonesia for such outrageous behavior.
@ G Rizza
Just a little nitpick:
Japan actually is the largest consumer of high value timber. In fact, even the largest European sawyers like Sodra and Klausner send their highest valued timber products to Japan.
And interesting chart that as per usual doesn't give enough data to get a full story!
China might be increasing its own forest coverage within China, but is quite busy these days raping PNG of its forests.
Japan and China are good at extracting the resources of other countries. Japan has strict laws about conservation of its forests but until recently was happy to accept woodchips from old growth forests.
Those that have screwed their environment balance by destruction of their native forests and grasslands demand the status quo remains (that's what these + or - on the status quo charts are about) and want the environmental imperialism of the redistribution of environmental assets into the "global commons".
In other words what's yours is mine. Why not kill off your inefficient subidised market gardening farmers Europe? Why not regrow your forests and return the charting of environmental-to-resource assets to absolute terms.
Do your bit for the environment in other ways than imperial socialist nanny state hectoring of people's you still see as of lesser intelligence and worth elsewhere. These people don't need your chauvinist "help" thank you very much.
This is the link for the research surprising finding about urbnization effect on tree growth.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v424/n6945/abs/nature01728.html
" We grew the same cottonwood clone in urban and rural sites and found that urban plant biomass was double that of rural sites. "
Nice to see China beat India hands down, as always.