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What if we can’t see the forests or trees?
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Illustration of environmental damage (Shutterstock/Andriy Solovyov)
M
ost of us are familiar with the old saying that sometimes we cannot see the forest for the trees. But what if I told you, at our present rate of exploitation of our forests and depletion of our natural resources in Asia and the Pacific, that we run the risk of not seeing the forests or the trees by the middle of this century?
As a region, Asia and the Pacific has more people than any other part of the world and many areas within have very high population densities. As a result, nearly two-thirds of the forests in this region have been degraded to various degrees.
Only 19 percent of primary forests remain (where human intervention has been minimal), compared with the global average of 32 percent. So what will the future of our forests look like? Will we continue down this road or will we work together to improve things?
To get a better understanding of the way forward, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations has just published a wide-ranging and comprehensive review of the forest sector in the Asia-Pacific region.
It examines trends from the last 25 years, the current state of forests and forestry and provides an outlook for their future to 2030 and beyond up to 2050.
This report is unique because it looks well beyond the horizon to what our forests could look like by mid-century. I say “could look like” because the mid-century predictions depend largely on the path we take through our forests in the coming years and decades.
The report, “Asia-Pacific Forest Sector Outlook Study III”, outlines some immense challenges ahead.
