ISLAMABAD: Some 47 million hectares of primary forests was lost between 2000 and 2020, according to a report, ‘State of the World’s Forests 2022’. The report warns that forests’ area, which covers 31 per cent of the Earth’s land surface (4.06 billion hectares), is shrinking, with 420 million hectares of forest lost through deforestation between 1990 and 2020.
The rate of deforestation is declining, but it was still 10 million hectares per year in 2015-2020, according to the report released by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations on Monday.
Planted forests cover 294 million hectares (7 per cent of the global forest area), with the area increasing by a rate of just under one per cent year in 2015-2020, down from 1.4 per cent year in 2010-2015. The area of other wooded land fell by nearly one per cent between 2000 and 2020, but the area of other land with tree cover comprising trees in urban settings, tree orchards, palms and agroforestry landscapes, increased by more than one-third between 1990 and 2020. There is at least 45 million hectares of agroforestry land, with an increasing trend.
Forests contain 662 billion tons of carbon, which is more than half the global carbon stock in soils and vegetation. Despite a continued reduction in area, forests absorbed more carbon than they emitted in 2011–2020 due to reforestation, improved forest management and other factors.
47m hectares of primary forests lost in two decades
It is estimated that more than half of world gross domestic product ($84.4 trillion in 2020) depends moderately ($31 trillion per year) or highly ($13 trillion per year) on ecosystem services, including those provided by forests.
The wealth represented by certain forest ecosystem services is estimated at $7.5 trillion, which is 21 per cent of the total wealth in land assets and about 9 per cent of world gross domestic product.
About 33 million people — 1 per cent of global employment — are estimated to work directly in the formal and informal forest sector. The sector contributed more than $1.52 trillion to world gross domestic product in 2015.
One-third of the global population — about 2.6 billion people — relies on wood and other traditional fuels for household cooking. Traditional wood-fuel, however, is a significant contributor to household air pollution, which is responsible for 1.63 million to 3.12 million premature deaths per year.
About three-quarters (73 per cent) of forests globally were owned publicly in 2015 and 22 per cent were owned privately.
Of the 2.2 billion hectares of degraded land identified as potentially (biophysically) available for restoration worldwide, 1.5 billion hectares may be best suited for mosaic restoration combining forests and trees with agriculture. A further one billion hectares of croplands on previous forestlands affected by land-use change would benefit from strategic additions of trees to increase agricultural productivity and the provision of ecosystem services.
Published in Dawn, May 3rd, 2022