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Ending poverty: Why do forests matter?
Forests are also critical in the fight against poverty for at least three main reasons.
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The lungs of the Earth – Thick rainforests covering the Gunung Gede Pangrango National Park (TNGGP) in West Java offers natural richness visitors can learn. (JP/Theresia Sufa)
E
nding poverty by 2030 on our planet is a global agenda. Not many people would readily think forests can contribute to this agenda. People tend to look at manufacturing and service sectors such as tourism as the main vehicles for poverty reduction. But forests can play an important role in overcoming poverty too.
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that globally 750 million people live in or near forests and additional 500 million live in open savannas with scattered trees and woodland. For these people, forests are the local supermarket — a place to source various food items, construction materials, and medicine.
But forests are also critical in the fight against poverty for at least three main reasons. First, forests provide basic needs such as food, shelter and energy. Bush meat, fish, animals, fruits, nuts, mushrooms, vegetables and insects, to name but a few, are regularly gathered from forests.
Second, forests contribute to local incomes, which is increasingly important in modern cash economies. The gross value added in the forest sector in Asia is US$260 billion dollar coming from the formal forestry sector such as logging industries production of lumber, wood-based panels, and pulp and paper. This represents 1.1 percent of Asia’s gross domestic product (GDP).
Income from “informal” sector that operates largely below the radar of official statistics is difficult to measure but estimates suggest that the income from non-wood forest products alone contribute as much as $88 billion of income annually in the Asia-Pacific region.
Third, forestry provides employment. The formal forestry sector employs 13.2 million people worldwide. Another 41 million are employed in the informal sector, which includes employment in wood production that is not captured in official statistics, woodfuel and charcoal production, unrecorded production of materials used for housing, and small-scale enterprises making handicrafts and other artisanal products, and commercial processing of nonwood forest products.
Of course, there are many more benefits from forests. Billions of people benefit from the environmental services that the forests provide, such as fresh air and clean water. Without forests it is impossible to breathe clean air and many of Asia’s major cities are dependent of forests for their supply of clean drinking water.
