Tuesday 13 March 2007
UN agency report tracks deforestation around the world.
Rome - An area of forest twice the size of Paris disappears every day although the rate of global deforestation has started to slow, according to a United Nations report issued on Tuesday.
"Deforestation continues at an unacceptable rate" of about 32 million acres a year, said Wulf Killmann, a forestry expert at the Food and Agriculture Organization, which published the report.
The destruction of forests not only reduces habitat available for wildlife but also releases carbon stored in trees into the atmosphere, adding emissions that many scientists fear are warming Earth.
Demand for agricultural land is one of the main reasons that forests continue to be erased.
Killman noted in a positive sign that reforestation is increasing in some areas.
A huge tree planting program in China, for example, more than offset large-scale deforestation in other parts of Asia such as Indonesia, to produce a net increase in the amount of forested land in the Asia-Pacific region during the first five years of the decade.
China's economic boom has driven demand for wood and the country has adopted a tree planting policy, not only to reduce its reliance on imported timber, but also for soil protection, especially in areas near the Gobi desert, Killmann said.
In Africa and Latin America, there are fewer positive signs.
Forested land in Latin America - home to the Amazon - fell to less than half of the continent's area. By 2005, forests were estimated at 47 percent of the total land, from 51 in 1990.
More than half of global deforestation in the period 2000-2005 happened in Africa, the report said, underlining its conclusion that poverty and war are major contributors to forest destruction.
Although economic growth often contributes to illegal logging, the FAO concluded that development was, on the whole, beneficial to forests as wealthier countries were more likely to establish conservation policies.
Citing the growth in forests in India and China, it concluded: "Economic development appears to be a necessary condition for deforestation to cease."
The United States reported an annual increase in forest area of 0.12 in the 1990s and 0.05 percent from 2000 to 2005. That increase, however, was accompanied by deforestation in Mexico, which reported a 0.52 percent decrease in the 1990s and a 0.40 percent decrease in wooded areas from 2000 to 2005. Canada reported no change during those periods.
In Europe, the report said a net increase was due to efforts in Spain and Italy, followed by Bulgaria, France, Portugal and Greece.
Africa, which accounts for about 16 percent of the global forests, lost over 9 percent of its trees between 1990 and 2005, the agency said. In Latin America and the Caribbean, home to nearly half of the world's forests, 0.5 percent were lost every year between 2000 and 2005 - up from an annual net rate of 0.46 percent in the 1990s.
Forests cover just under 9.88 billion acres, about 30 percent of the world's land area. The world lost 3 percent of its wooded areas between 1995 and 2000, the agency said.
US Lawmakers Bid to Keep Out Ill-Gotten Timber
By Missy Ryan
Reuters
Wednesday 14 March 2007
Washington - A bipartisan group of US lawmakers on Tuesday pushed for new rules to stop American companies from buying illegally logged timber plundered from fragile forests around the world.
Illegal logging not only is a death knell for forest preserves and rich ecosystems, according to Rep. Earl Blumenauer, an Oregon Democrat, but it also cost the US timber industry US$1 billion a year in lost sales.
Up to 30 percent of hardwood lumber and plywood traded around the world may now come from world forest preserves or other fragile areas in the Peruvian Amazon or Indonesia, Blumenauer and other lawmakers say.
"There's a ripple effect. It's not just that it costs jobs .. but this is undermining indigenous cultures in other parts of the world," he said in an interview.
Blumenauer, along with Florida Democrat Robert Wexler and Illinois Republican Jerry Weller, see the plan as a chance to expand existing federal prohibitions that already exist on illegally gotten wildlife or plants.
The three lawmakers are supported by green groups such as the Environmental Investigation Agency and the Sierra Club.
Those groups say illegal logging builds up global warming gases, decreases biodiversity, and depletes safe drinking water. They also say it tramples the rights of indigenous people, spurs corruption in poor nation's governments, and gives rise to dangerous timber cartels.
Often, developing countries turn illegally logged wood into products like flooring, pool cues, and luxury doors that end up in US homes, Alexander von Bismarck, campaign director at the Environmental Investigation Agency, told reporters at a news conference to launch the bill. He said China's government is especially lax about the problem.
Bill Would Enable Prosecution
Blumenauer's bill would ban the import, export, possession, purchase or sale of illegally harvested timber.
That might restore what lawmakers estimate as a US$460 million annual hit to US firms in lost exports. They also believe the trade brings down the value of US exports by US$500 million to US$700 million a year, which takes a special toll on timber states like Blumenauer's Oregon.
Bill sponsors say the change won't burden the agencies that now implement the rules on wildlife and plants, including the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service, Customs and Border Protection, and the Agriculture Department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
But Blumenauer acknowledged the move would likely push up timber prices for US consumers.
That might make it tough to pass Capitol Hill. Right now, it's unclear how much support the bill has now in Congress or if the White House will actively oppose it.
Brent McClendon, vice president of the International Wood Products Association, which represents importers, said the United States is already doing a great deal to combat illegal logging, pointing at a cooperation deal signed last year which gave Indonesia US$1 million to guard against illegal logging.
He said Blumenauer's bill wouldn't do much to get at entrenched problems in faraway countries, while it could expose US companies to big costs, property seizures or worse.
US lumber imports were US$22.5 billion in 2006. The lion's share of that was from Canada, McClendon said.
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