PART II

KEY ISSUES IN THE
FOREST SECTOR TODAY

The status of forests: the Global Forest Resources Assessment 2000

Demand has grown for a broad range of information on forests at the national and international levels. Reliable information on the status and trends of forest resources helps give decision-makers the perspective necessary for orienting forestry policies and programmes. Such information is useful for monitoring progress towards sustainable forest management and for framing international discussions and agreements on such vital issues as deforestation, biological diversity, desertification, global climate change, wood supply and sustainable development.

FAO has carried out periodic global forest assessments since 1947, at intervals of approximately ten years. This chapter summarizes the methodology and key findings on forest area and forest management of FAO's most recent and comprehensive forest assessment, the Global Forest Resources Assessment 2000 (FRA 2000). The text also refers to the two previous assessments: FRA 1990, which reported on forest cover in 1990 and forest cover change between 1980 and 1990 (FAO, 1995a, 1995b), and the interim 1995 assessment, which reported on forest cover in 1995 and change from 1990 to 1995 (FAO, 1997d). FRA 2000 forest resource data at country level are provided in Annex 2. Detailed country profiles, including baseline data, and material on all parameters covered by the assessment, are available on the FAO Forestry Department Web site.¹ The full report of FRA 2000 is due to be published by the end of 2001.

THE ASSESSMENT PROCESS

The Global Forest Resources Assessment 2000 was a joint endeavour carried out by FAO in cooperation with its member countries and many other partners. Detailed planning for FRA 2000 began in 1996. In that year, FAO convened an expert consultation in Kotka, Finland, where some of the world's leading forest inventory specialists provided technical advice on the scope and implementation of FRA 2000 as well as on a core set of forest-related definitions to be used in the assessment. In 1997, the FAO Committee on Forestry, FAO's highest-level forest policy forum for its member countries, and the fourth session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests (IPF) approved the consultation's findings and endorsed FAO's leadership of the assessment.

FRA 2000 was a five-year effort, consisting of a number of activities: a forest assessment based on country information; a remote sensing survey of forest cover change at the pan-tropical level; mapping of global forest cover and ecological zones; and the establishment of a forestry information system. FRA 2000 provided basic assessment information on forest area in 2000, change in forest area between 1990 and 2000, and wood volume and biomass. Moreover, in keeping with recommendations made at Kotka, it included a number of other parameters to provide a more holistic picture of forest resources worldwide. The new subjects included, among other things, forest area under protection status, trees outside forests, forest fires, non-wood forest products, timber removals and information on forest management.

Great effort was made to ensure that the FRA process was both participatory and transparent. National forestry agencies from nearly every country of the world, a large number of research centres and academic institutions and several international, regional and non-governmental organizations collaborated in the implementation of FRA 2000. Before publishing the FRA 2000 data, FAO formally invited countries to review the preliminary results of the assessment. Countries were given the opportunity to submit comments and supporting technical material that could improve the results compiled by FAO. Background information and analyses used in the forest resource calculations have been made available on the FAO Forestry Department Web site (www.fao.org/forestry/fo/country/index.jsp), making it possible to trace the final results back to the original source data.

Forest assessment based on country information

The central undertaking of FRA 2000 was the forest assessment based on country information. National-level data on forest resources were collected through an exhaustive survey of inventory reports and other information from countries. National forestry experts and other partners from around the world were involved in this effort. A major partner was the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UN-ECE). UN-ECE coordinated the assessment of temperate and tropical forests in the industrialized countries and countries in transition: Australia, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Europe,² Japan, New Zealand and North America. FAO coordinated the assessment of developing countries, in which almost all tropical and subtropical forests and some temperate forests are located, and was also responsible for the integration of all the information into the harmonized synthesis constituting the global assessment.

To collect data for the developing countries, FAO formally requested country representatives to supply the most recent forest inventory reports, and FAO staff and consultants visited countries and held workshops with concerned country representatives. FAO relied mainly on statistics from primary sources, rather than on quoted or secondary sources. In the countries where no applicable national forest inventories existed, it was necessary to piece together information from various partial inventories or to use secondary sources and reconnaissance surveys. In contrast, UN-ECE collected information on industrialized countries from questionnaires filled out by national correspondents, who used mainly national forest inventory data. All data provided to FAO and UN-ECE were checked and validated with the national correspondents in an intense dialogue over nearly two years.

Several major challenges had to be met in order to assemble country information and then integrate it to form a global picture of the status of forest area in 2000 and change in forest area between 1990 and 2000. After FAO and its partners made a major effort to amass all relevant inventory and related information, the information base for many countries was found to be limited. For example, over half of the developing countries had only one forest inventory, and more than one-fourth of them had never carried out an inventory (see Table 1). Most of the country data used for FRA 2000 spanned a period of about ten years (although a few inventories were even older). Only a handful of countries maintain continuous national forest inventories with comparable time series. As a result, it was difficult to calculate precise estimates of forest change at both the national and global levels. Projecting data forwards and backwards to the reference years 2000 and 1990 was a critical and difficult aspect of the assessment. In the absence of comparable multiple-date inventories, a trend line had to be derived for many countries by using a variation of the "convergence of evidence" method, in which countries' survey results were complemented with other information such as inventory statistics, economic information and policy studies. Finally, forest vegetation types and terminology varied widely among countries, compounding the problem of aggregating national data into harmonized global estimates.

To make the highly variable country information useful for global reporting, FAO developed a set of protocols and standards for its harmonization. All country information had first to be classified according to a common set of terms and definitions. (See Annex 1 for some definitions used.) This was a difficult task owing to the sheer magnitude and variability of the information produced by countries and the wide range of forest formations, ecological conditions and cover types that exist worldwide. For example, FRA 2000 assembled more than 650 definitions of forest from 132 developing countries. Reducing this information into a highly compressed set of global forest classes (i.e. closed forest, open forest, and other wooded land) was a major task. For the definition of forest, FAO adopted the threshold of 10 percent crown cover. Recommended in the landmark study on worldwide vegetation classifications carried out by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO, 1973), this threshold was used for developing countries in the Forest Resources Assessments of 1980 and 1990, but FRA 2000 was the first assessment to use it as the minimum canopy cover to describe forests in industrialized countries as well.

To make the comparison between forest area in 1990 and 2000 possible, the 1990 national forest area figures derived by the interim 1995 assessment were revised, using the same definitions, methodologies and new inventory data used for calculating the 2000 figures. This established a new baseline for forest cover in 1990. It should be noted that updating national forest area figures from a previous forest resources assessment by incorporating new data is a standard feature of all FAO forest assessments.

Pan-tropical remote sensing survey

An independent remote sensing survey was conducted for FRA 2000 to complement the survey based on country information. Controlled sampling of tropical forests combined with a uniform data source - satellite imagery - provided a comparable set of statistics for 1980-1990 and 1990-2000, making possible a direct comparison of forest area change over these two assessment periods. The survey relied on statistical sampling (10 percent) of 87 percent of the world's tropical forests through 117 sample units to produce estimates of the status and change of tropical forest at regional, ecological and pan-tropical levels (but not at the national level).³ The principal output of the remote sensing survey was an area change matrix, which illustrates and quantifies how the forest and other land use classes changed between 1980 and 2000. The forest and land cover classification scheme used by the remote sensing survey was linked closely to the FRA forest classes used for the country-based survey and for the low-resolution global forest map, so that data from these three sources are complementary.

FRA 2000 global maps

The production of global maps was a significant new undertaking for FRA 2000.⁴ For the first time, a global forest map now exists that shows the location and distribution of forests according to FRA classifications. FRA 2000 also produced global maps on ecological zones and protected areas. The FRA 2000 maps are useful visual aids for understanding the location and extent of the major forest areas of the world. Each map is generated using computerized Geographic Information System (GIS) technology, which makes it possible to combine the maps with other spatial and statistical data.

The forest map has been printed at a scale of 1:40 000 000 and enlargements up to 1:10 000 000 are possible. A poster version of the forest map accompanies this publication (reproduced in Figure 2). Digital versions are available on the FAO Forestry Department Web site (www.fao.org/forestry/fo/fra/index.jsp).

FIGURE 2
Global Forest Resources Assessment 2000 (460 KB)

The accuracy of the forest map is estimated at about 80 percent for all forest classes. Accuracy for closed forests is somewhat higher and accuracy for open/fragmented forests is somewhat lower. Other wooded lands has the lowest accuracy of the three woody vegetation classes represented.

The global ecological zoning map provided a means of differentiating forests globally by ecological zone. While most countries have appropriate means of compiling national information on forests according to ecological units, it was not possible to aggregate this information at the global level prior to the development of the ecological zoning map.
A major reason for this was the absence of an internationally accepted global standard and classification system that is geometrically correct and registered to a map base.⁵ In the past, few applications have required analysis and reporting according to ecological zone at the global scale, and until now, useful global maps have been slow to emerge. However, because certain environmental functions have international dimensions, global applications of ecological zoning are expected to become increasingly important.

FAO identified the Köppen system, as modified by Trewartha in 1968, as the most appropriate ecological zoning scheme for the FRA 2000 ecological zoning map. Slightly modifying this scheme, FAO identified 20 global ecological zones, ranging from evergreen tropical rain forest to boreal tundra (see Box 12). These were then mapped. The worldwide forest cover according to ecological zone was determined by overlaying the FRA 2000 global forest cover map on the global ecological zoning map in the GIS, and then extracting the statistics.

Disseminating the results

All of the country forest information, the remote sensing survey results and the reports from the special studies of FRA 2000 are archived in the Forestry Information System (FORIS), which links multiple references from each country to databases containing statistics, terms and definitions, contact information and other data. FORIS is accessible and easy to update, and a real-time link to the FAO Web site makes it possible to provide the latest statistics to the public as soon as they have been entered, analysed and cleared by countries and FAO. In addition to the findings, the background material used to calculate the FRA data is made available on the Web site, making it possible to trace the estimates to original source documents. This provides transparency in the FRA 2000 calculations.

GLOBAL FOREST RESOURCES IN 2000

FRA 2000 provides a wide range of information on the status and trends of forest resources. The text below focuses on the findings of FRA 2000 on forest area and change in forest area over the past decade. Information on other forest parameters (e.g. forest condition, forest fires and non-wood forest products) may be found on the FAO Forestry Department Web site (www.fao.org/forestry/fo/fra/index.jsp), in the report of the assessment for temperate and boreal forests in industrialized countries (UN-ECE/FAO, 2000b) and in the full report of FRA 2000, which is due to be published by the end of 2001.

Total forest area, 2000

The world has about 3 870 million ha of forests, of which 95 percent are natural forests⁶ and 5 percent are forest plantations (see Table 2 in Annex 2). This global forest cover figure is higher than the forest cover estimates made by the previous two forest resources assessments (FRA 1990 and the interim 1995 assessment); this does not, however, indicate a real increase in forest area worldwide. Rather, it reflects a change in the definition of forest (i.e. the application of a uniform definition of forest for the first time) and the incorporation of new inventory data (see Box 13 for further explanation).

FRA 2000 revised the 1990 forest cover figures, using the same definitions and methodologies used for calculating the 2000 figures, in order to make comparison between 1990 and 2000 possible. This set a new baseline for forest cover in 1990.

Table 2 provides FRA 2000 data on the distribution of forests by region. Europe (including the Russian Federation) and South America have the largest percentage of the world's forests (27 and 23 percent, respectively), and Oceania has the least (5 percent). A map showing the location of forests by region is provided in Figure 3.

FIGURE 3 Location of forests, by region

Two-thirds of the world's forests are located in only ten countries: the Russian Federation, Brazil, Canada, the United States, China, Australia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia, Angola and Peru (Figure 4; see also Table 2 in Annex 2).

The world average of forest area per person is 0.6 ha. There are, however, large differences among countries. Asia has very little forest per capita, whereas Oceania and South America have a substantial area per person (see Figure 5).

Only 22 countries have more than 3 ha of forest per capita, and only about 5 percent of the world's population lives in these countries - mostly in Brazil and the Russian Federation. Three-quarters of the world's population, on the other hand, lives in countries with less than 0.5 ha per capita, including most of the densely populated countries in Asia and Europe.

About 30 percent of the world's land area is under forest, as already seen in Table 2. The proportion of total land area under forest varies significantly by region and country. About half the land area of South America and Europe is covered by forest, but only one-sixth of Asia's land is forested. Africa, North and Central America and Oceania fall in between, each with about one-fourth of its land covered by forest. Fifty countries and two "areas" (e.g. territories, protectorates) are reported to have less than 10 percent of their land covered by forest. Twenty countries and two areas have more than 60 percent of their land under forest (Figure 6).

FIGURE 6 Forest area as percentage of country land area

Worldwide forest cover according to ecological zones was determined by using the FRA 2000 global forest cover map and global ecological zoning map. The largest proportion of the world's forests is in the tropical zone (47 percent), followed by the boreal (33 percent), temperate (11 percent) and subtropical (9 percent) zones.

FIGURE 7 Distribution of the world's forests by major ecological zone

Figure 7 shows the location of forests in these four broad ecological zones. The distribution of forests according to the more detailed ecological zoning classifications and by region is indicated in Table 3. Tropical and subtropical dry forests are concentrated in Africa (containing 36 percent of the world total), South America (30 percent) and Asia (21 percent). The majority of tropical rain forests are located in South America (58 percent), but a large proportion (24 percent) is also found in Africa; most of the rest is in Asia (17 percent). Nearly all temperate and boreal forests are located in Europe and North and Central America. Mountain forests are found mainly in Europe (40 percent) and North and Central America (34 percent).

Forest plantation area, 2000

FRA 2000 provides a picture of the status of forest plantations worldwide. It is the first global assessment to have estimated forest plantation areas using a uniform definition and including data from all countries. Owing to changes in both definitions and methodologies used, the 2000 global and national plantation data cannot be directly compared with those of previous plantation assessments (e.g. FAO, 1995b). For example, rubberwood plantations were considered forest plantations in FRA 2000, whereas in previous assessments they were not.

The area of plantations in many industrialized countries, particularly in Europe, is less well defined than in developing countries. Many European countries make no distinction between planted and natural forests in their inventories, and the difference between the two is often not readily discernible in practice. In Europe, naturally occurring species are commonly planted, so that planted stands may have species compositions that are similar or identical to those of natural stands; in addition, planted stands generally have long rotation periods (in some cases more than 100 years), so they may become, over time, difficult to distinguish from natural forests.

According to FRA 2000 data, there are an estimated 187 million ha of plantations worldwide, representing 5 percent of the global forest area. Data on forest plantation area by region is indicated in Table 4. Asia has by far the largest forest plantation estate of any region, accounting for 62 percent of the world's forest plantations. Plantations account for over one-fifth of all forests in Asia. The ten countries with the largest reported areas of forest plantation together account for 80 percent of the global forest plantation area (Figure 8).

FIGURE 8 Countries with the largest proportion  of the world's forest plantations, 2000

Source: FRA 2000.

About 60 percent of forest plantations are located in only four countries: China, India, the Russian Federation and the United States.

Species in the genera Pinus and Eucalyptus continue to be the most commonly planted trees in forest plantations, accounting for 20 percent and 10 percent, respectively, of forest plantation area worldwide. However, comparison with the findings of the interim 1995 assessment suggests that the overall diversity of species planted is increasing.

Industrial plantations (i.e. those supplying raw material for industry) account for 48 percent of the global forest plantation estate, while non-industrial plantations (e.g. those grown for fuelwood, soil and water conservation and wind protection) account for 26 percent, and 26 percent are unspecified. The countries with major industrial plantation areas are China (37 million ha), the United States (16 million ha) and India (12 million ha). These three countries accounted for 73 percent of all industrial forest plantations globally in 2000. The countries with a significant proportion of non-industrial plantation areas are India (21 million ha), China (8 million ha), Indonesia and Thailand (4 million ha each), together accounting for 75 percent of all non-industrial forest plantations in the world.

Plantation ownership is of interest in light of various countries' efforts to privatize some of their forest plantations. The ownership of industrial plantations, where specified in the ten countries with the largest plantation estates, is 33 percent public, 26 percent private and 41 percent other or unspecified. Of the non-industrial plantations, 39 percent are public, 39 percent are private and 22 percent are other or unspecified.

Forest area trends, 1990-2000

Perhaps the most sought-after result of a global forest resources assessment is the rate of change in forest area globally and by country. FAO's previous assessments have made major contributions to the world's understanding of the status of forest resources and patterns of tropical deforestation. They have also stimulated discussion in the international community concerning exact rates of change, methods used to capture the information, and the terms and definitions used to describe forests and forest changes.

FRA 2000 used two independent means to assess forest area change in the 1990s: data calculated from the information supplied by countries, and the findings of the pan-tropical remote sensing survey. The pan-tropical remote sensing survey provided directly comparable information on changes in tropical forests at the pan-tropical and regional levels over the 1980-1990 and 1990-2000 periods, and yielded information on the patterns of forest cover and related land use changes in the tropics. The country information represented a worldwide set of national assessments, which were harmonized according to global definitions and subjected to time series analysis to yield the FRA 2000 results.

The definitions of the forest change processes - reforestation, deforestation and afforestation - are central to the assessment of forest cover change. Box 14 provides an explanation of these processes and the relationships among them.

(See also Annex 1 for definitions of these and related terms.) Awareness of how these terms are defined in FRA 2000 is key to understanding the assessment's findings.

Changes in forest cover reflect transfers between forest and other land use classes (e.g. agriculture, infrastructure and mining). The net change in forest area equals the difference between the increase in forest area through both afforestation and the natural expansion of forest (e.g. through forest succession on abandoned agricultural lands), and the loss of forest through deforestation.

FIGURE 9 Forest area changes in the 1990s (million ha per year)

Notes: Sizes of the boxes and arrows are approximately in proportion to one another; natural regeneration within natural forests and reforestation within forest plantations are not shown; "other land use classes" include "other wooded land" and all other land uses; "tropical forests" are forests in countries covered by the FRA 2000 pan-tropical remote sensing survey. Source: FRA 2000.

Figure 9 shows the changes in total forest area for 1990-2000 according to the FRA 2000 data, broken down into change in natural forests and change in forest plantations, for both tropical and non-tropical areas. Table 5 provides this information in terms of average annual change in forest area during the same period.

These data indicate that the world's natural forests continued to be converted to other land uses at a very high rate during the 1990s. An estimated 16.1 million ha of natural forest worldwide were lost annually during the 1990s (14.6 million ha through deforestation and 1.5 million ha through conversion to forest plantations). Of the 15.2 million ha lost annually in the tropics, 14.2 million ha were converted to other land uses and 1.0 million ha were converted to forest plantations. In non-tropical areas, 0.9 million ha of natural forest were lost per year, of which 0.5 million ha were converted to forest plantations and 0.4 million ha were converted to other land use classes.

Against the gross annual loss of 16.1 million ha of natural forests worldwide, there was a gain of 3.6 million ha as a result of the natural expansion of forest, giving a balance of -12.5 million ha as the annual net change of natural forest area globally. Of these 3.6 million ha, 2.6 million ha were in non-tropical areas, while 1.0 million ha were in the tropics. Much of the gain in natural forest area was the result of natural forest succession on abandoned agricultural land. Expansion of forest has been occurring for several decades in many industrialized countries, especially where agriculture is no longer an economically viable land use (Box 15). This has been the case, for example, in some countries in Europe.

Gains in forest area also occurred through the expansion of forest plantations. The average rate of successful plantation establishment over the decade was 3.1 million ha per year, of which 1.9 million ha were in tropical areas and 1.2 million ha were in non-tropical areas. As shown in Table 5, half of the new plantation area was on land converted from natural forest (i.e. representing reforestation on cleared natural forest land).

The net change in forest area during the 1990s (i.e. the sum of changes in natural forests and forest plantations) was an estimated -9.4 million ha per year. This represents the balance between the global deforestation rate of 14.6 million ha per year and the rate of forest area increase of 5.2 million ha per year (Table 6).

The global figures obscure significant differences in forest cover change among regions and countries (Figure 10 and Table 3 of Annex 2). Net deforestation rates were highest in Africa and South America. The loss of natural forests in Asia was also high, but was significantly offset (in terms of area) by forest plantation establishment. This resulted in a more moderate rate of change of total forest area in the region.

In contrast, the forest cover in the other regions, which are largely made up of industrialized countries, increased slightly. Figure 11 shows the areas of the world with the highest rates of net deforestation and the highest rates of forest area increase during the 1990-2000 period according to the FRA 2000 estimates. The countries with the highest net loss of forest area between 1990 and 2000 were Argentina, Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia, Myanmar, Mexico, Nigeria, the Sudan, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Those with the highest net gain of forest during this period were China, Belarus, Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation and the United States.

Comparison of forest area trends in 1990-2000, 1980-1990 and 1990-1995

For a longer-term picture of trends in forest area change, a comparison may be made of the rate of change in the global forest area (in million ha per year) calculated for the 1990-2000 period in FRA 2000, for 1990-1995 in the interim 1995 assessment, and for 1980-1990 in FRA 1990. In the following analysis, this comparison is made at the global level.

According to the reported numbers, the estimated net loss of forest (i.e. the balance of the loss of natural forest and the gain in forest area through afforestation and natural expansion of forest) was lower in the 1990s than in the 1980s. Net annual forest area change was estimated to be -9.4 million ha for the 1990-2000 period, -11.3 million ha in the 1990-1995 period and -13.0 million ha in 1980-1990.

However, the forest area change estimates from FRA 2000 are not directly comparable with those of the previous two assessments, owing to three factors: changes in definitions, changes in methodology and updated inventory information. Nonetheless, if the effects of these three factors are taken into consideration, some general conclusions can safely be made regarding deforestation over the past 20 years.

The change of forest definition for industrialized countries, while notably increasing global estimates of forest cover, did not greatly affect the estimated rate of change of global forest area. This is because the change in definition had the greatest impact on the forest area of Australia and the Russian Federation, where conversions of forest to other land uses were relatively small on a global scale and thus did not significantly alter worldwide change rates. The revised 1990 national forest area figures (based on FRA 2000 definitions, methodologies and new data) for most other industrialized countries showed a high degree of consistency and comparability with the 1990 figures of the previous two assessments. The three assessments used essentially the same definition for natural forest for developing countries. The new definition for plantations (which allowed the inclusion of rubberwood plantations) affected the forest area figure for a few tropical countries, but without significant effect on the world forest area change rate.

The three assessments used the same methodology to assess forest area change in the industrialized countries. In the developing countries, however, FRA 1990 and the interim 1995 assessment used regional models driven by demographic data to generate national change rates, whereas FRA 2000 relied directly on survey reports. Even so, an analysis has shown that this difference in the methodology used for developing countries does not significantly affect the estimates for global rates of change.

Updated inventory information for many countries led to new estimates at the national level. Although these were not always comparable with earlier assessments, they did not significantly affect the estimates of global change rates.

The findings of the FRA 2000 pan-tropical remote sensing survey supported the results of the country-based assessment. The survey indicated a net rate of change for tropical forests that was slightly lower in the 1990s than in the 1980s, but the difference was not statistically significant. The survey's findings on forest cover change in the 1980s and 1990s, which are completely compatible with one another, confirm a continued high rate of forest loss in the tropics during the 1990s. This result fits well with the results of the country assessment, as net gains in forest area are reported for the non-tropical countries as a whole while net losses are occurring in the tropics. The pan-tropical remote sensing survey also provided information on the patterns of forest cover change. The results show high levels of transition between various land cover classes over the 1980-2000 period (Table 7).

In conclusion, after analysis of the estimates of present and previous assessments, FRA 2000 points to a lower rate of net loss of forests worldwide in the 1990s than in the 1980s, owing mainly to a higher rate of natural expansion of forest area. At the same time, the worldwide loss of natural forests has continued at roughly comparable high levels over the past 20 years.

Forest volume and biomass

Wood supply and production are still the forest functions for which the most comprehensive data are available, as wood supply remains the focus of most forest inventories. This reflects the economic importance of wood to many forest owners, public and private. FRA 2000 estimated the biomass and volume of wood (growing stock) in forests worldwide.

Total wood volume (m³) and above-ground woody biomass (tonnes) in forests were estimated for 166 countries, representing 99 percent of the world's forest area. The world total of above-ground woody biomass in forests was 420 billion tonnes, of which more than one-third was located in South America (Table 8) and about 27 percent was in Brazil alone.

Figure 12 shows the countries with the highest total forest woody biomass. The worldwide average above-ground woody biomass in forests was 109 tonnes per hectare (Figure 13). South America had the highest average biomass per hectare, at 128 tonnes per hectare.

The countries with the highest standing volume per hectare include many Central American and Central European countries, the former having high-volume tropical rain forests and the latter having temperate forests managed to achieve high stocking levels.

FOREST MANAGEMENT IN 2000

Status and trends in forest management

Developments in forest management over the past decade have focused on progressing towards sustainable forest management in accordance with the "Forest Principles"⁷ agreed at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in 1992. The sustainable forest management concept, which balances environmental, socio-cultural and economic objectives of management, has stimulated changes in forest policy and legislation and in forest management practices in many countries.

While FRA 2000 did not attempt to estimate the total area of forests under sustainable forest management worldwide, it included information on selected indicators demonstrating countries' commitment to working towards sustainable forest management (see Table 4 in Annex 2).

One measure of political commitment to the concept of sustainable forest management is the number of countries currently involved in international initiatives to develop and implement criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management. As of 2000, 149 countries were involved in a total of nine ecoregional criteria and indicator processes (Figure 14). All of these were established within the past ten years. (See also Part IV for more information on these processes.) A common indicator in all but one of these processes is the area of forest being managed according to a management plan.⁸

Information on the total area of forest being managed according to a forest management plan was collected for FRA 2000. Eighty-three countries, including all industrialized countries, provided this information for FRA 2000, and an additional 14 countries supplied comparable information to FAO's Latin American and Caribbean Forestry Commission in 2000. The findings from these countries indicate that 89 percent of forests in industrialized countries are being managed "according to a formal or informal management plan". National statistics on forest management plans were not, however, available for many developing countries, including several of the larger countries in Africa and some key countries in Asia. Nevertheless, preliminary results from developing countries showed that of a total forest area of 2 139 million ha, at least 123 million ha, or about 6 percent, were covered by a "formal, nationally approved forest management plan covering a period of at least five years".⁹ It must be emphasized that the total area reported to be subject to a formal or informal forest management plan is not necessarily equivalent to the total area of forest under sustainable forest management. Some areas covered by a management plan may not be sustainably managed, while some areas not under a formal management plan may be.

Information on forest certification was also collected for FRA 2000. Forest certification is an instrument used to confirm the achievement of certain predefined minimum standards of forest management in a given forest area at a given point in time. Whereas certification implies that an area is well or sustainably managed for wood production, the total area of well-managed forest is not limited only to certified areas. Many uncertified forests, including both those managed primarily for wood production and those with other management objectives, may also be under sound management. (See Part I for more information on forest products certification.) A number of international, regional and national forest certification schemes now exist, focusing primarily on forests managed for timber production purposes. Depending on how the term "area certified" is defined, the area of certified forests worldwide as of the end of 2000 has been estimated to be about 80 million ha, or about 2 percent of total forest area. While some important wood-producing countries in the tropics have forests certified under existing certification schemes or are in the process of developing new schemes, most certified forests are located in temperate, industrialized countries; at the end of 2000, about 92 percent of all certified forests worldwide were located in the United States, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Canada, Germany and Poland. At the same time, only four countries with tropical moist forests (Bolivia, Brazil, Guatemala and Mexico) were listed as having more than 100 000 ha of certified forests, for a combined total of 1.8 million ha.

Despite the indications above that there may be cause for cautious optimism with regard to increased implementation of sound forest management practices in at least some countries and regions, reliable information on the longer-term trends of forest management worldwide is not readily available. Very few attempts have been made in the past to estimate the extent of sustainable forest management worldwide. This is perhaps not surprising, given the number of countries and the wide variety of forest types, local conditions and management objectives. Previous attempts have, as a consequence, focused on specific regions and on specific management objectives and definitions of sustainable forest management, allowing for a partial analysis of trends. The FAO Forest Resources Assessments of 1980 and 1990 and a study undertaken by the International Tropical Timber Organization (Poore et al., 1989) provide useful points of reference.

According to FRA 1980, an estimated 42 million ha of forest in 76 tropical countries were reported to be subject to "intensive management for wood production purposes" in 1980 (FAO/UNEP, 1982). In 2000, at least 117 million ha of forests in these countries were reported to be covered by a formal, nationally approved forest management plan of a duration of more than five years. Most, but not all, of these forests were managed for wood production. A reported 2.2 million ha of forests in these countries had obtained forest certification by third parties.

The ITTO study estimated that in 1988 a maximum of 1 million ha of forest in 17 tropical timber producing countries were being managed sustainably for wood production purposes. Judging from the area under management plans and/or certified in the same 17 countries in 2000, a considerably larger area may now be under sustainable management for wood production purposes. Currently more than 35 million ha of forests in these countries are covered by a formal forest management plan, and 1.7 million ha have been certified by third parties. A considerably larger area is likely to be eligible for certification or to be under sustainable management for purposes other than timber production. As a case in point, six tropical countries¹⁰ with a combined forest area of 206 million ha, while not yet having all their forests under sustainable management, appear to have established all the conditions that make it likely that they can manage their forests sustainably in the near future (ITTO, 2000b).

The situation in temperate and boreal forests appears to have remained stable or to have improved over the past 20 years. In the early 1980s, all areas classified as closed forests in the former Soviet Union were reported as "managed according to a forest management plan", and in 2000 the Russian Federation and most of the States of the CIS reported that all forests were being "managed according to a formal or informal management plan", according to FRA 1980 and FRA 2000, respectively. Nineteen other countries in Europe provided information on the situation in the early 1980s, in 1990 and in 2000 for forest management assessments (UN-ECE/FAO, 1985; UN-ECE/FAO, 1992; UN-ECE/FAO, 2000b). For these countries, the proportion of closed forests "managed according to a forest management plan" in 1980 was 64 percent; in 1990, the proportion of forests "under active management" was 71 percent; and in 2000, 95 percent of the forest area was reported to be "managed in accordance with a formal or informal management plan". The proportion of the forest area reported to be under management in Canada and the United States increased from 60 and 41 percent, respectively, in 1990 to 71 and 56 percent, respectively, in 2000.

In summary, it appears that, overall, the situation as regards forest management has improved in most regions over the past 20 years.

Forests under protection status

Interest in the conservation of forests, particularly for biological diversity, has increased considerably during the past decade. FRA 2000 included an assessment of the area of forests worldwide under protection status, using the World Conservation Union (IUCN) classification system for protected areas (see Table 9).

FRA 2000 relied on two independent sets of statistics for assessment of forest area under protection status: data submitted by countries in response to the FRA 2000 questionnaire, and a spatial database on protected areas developed by the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC) of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Most of the FRA 2000 questionnaires were sent to national forestry agencies, while WCMC collected its information from national agencies involved in nature conservation, parks and protected areas. Comparison of these two data sources indicated that much work is still needed to harmonize national and international data, including data from different agencies in the same country. In addition, the interpretation of the concept of protected areas frequently differs substantially among countries, making the aggregation of statistics unreliable at the global level. For example, some countries consider that virtually all their forests fall under protected status according to IUCN Category V or VI, as a consequence of general forestry legislation that provides for management and sustainable use of forests.

Consistent global data, broken down by country, were established by overlaying the WCMC spatial database on the FRA 2000 global forest cover map. The results indicated that, worldwide, about 12 percent of forests are in IUCN Categories I to VI. The North and Central America region has the largest proportion (20 percent) of its forests under protected area status, followed by South America (19 percent). Europe is the region with the lowest proportion (5 percent), in part because the IUCN classification (particularly Categories V and VI) is not well adapted to European conditions. Figure 15 shows the location of the major areas of forest under protection status.

Additional parameters related to forest management in industrialized countries

The assessment process for industrialized countries, coordinated by UN-ECE, included a wider set of variables than the assessment for developing countries and yielded additional information on several important aspects of forestry. Some of these are highlighted below.

Changes in forest condition. Information was collected for FRA 2000 on factors that affect forest condition and, thus, forest management. In addition to the effort made to collect data on the extent and incidence of forest fires worldwide (see also discussion in Part I), information was collected from industrialized countries on the condition of the temperate and boreal forests and the extent of damage to them. The findings are briefly summarized as follows.

• Fire is a major problem throughout the temperate and boreal zones, although the causes and significance of fires vary from place to place.
• Insects and diseases are the most important causes of damage in many forests, although reporting is not done systematically in most countries and there are no standard ways of measuring this type of damage, which varies in severity and nature according to the cause and is often episodic.
• Damage by wildlife and livestock grazing, which mainly affects new regeneration, is significant in many countries.
• Damage by abiotic causes, such as storms or snow, is highly episodic and statistics are not usually kept. In Europe, two major storm events (in 1990 and 1999) were particularly notable. (See Part I for more information on the 1999 storm.)
• The reported figures indicate that defoliation is much more widespread in Europe than in North America. However, the comparability of defoliation figures over time and among countries is problematic, as is their significance. Pollution damage is often cited as a major contributory cause of defoliation, but there is no direct evidence for this - nor, indeed, any clear indication of what a "normal" level of defoliation should be.

Although FRA 2000 provides information on certain types of forest damage, it is not yet possible to make an objective assessment of forest condition because of the different causes of damage and the lack of clarity as to what the condition of a "normal" or "healthy" forest would be. Forest condition should ideally be assessed in relation to forest function, but functions vary from forest to forest and over time. The advances in assessing forest condition made by FRA 2000 have raised further questions which will have to be addressed in the future.

Wood production. In many parts of the world, forests are still predominantly managed for wood supply and production. An effort was made in FRA 2000 to estimate the volume of wood, its rate of growth and how much is harvested. The results are given here for the industrialized countries.

Temperate and boreal forests of industrialized countries contain 188 billion m³ of growing stock. Nearly half of this volume is in the Russian Federation. However, some forests are not "available for wood supply", either because they have been designated as protected or because harvesting would be uneconomical owing to their remoteness or difficult terrain (see Figure 16).

In Europe, 85 percent of forest is available for wood supply, compared with 70 percent in North America and 64 percent in the CIS. In "other industrialized countries", notably Australia, many forests are considered unavailable because of their remoteness or because they are located in nature reserves. Two-thirds of the area that is not available for wood supply in Europe, and all of the area in this category in the United States and Japan, is so considered for reasons of conservation and forest protection. All unavailable forests in Japan and the United States are reported to be unavailable for these reasons. However, in Canada and the Russian Federation, economic reasons (mainly remoteness) predominate. In a context of increasing total forest area, both the areas available and those unavailable for wood supply have been growing in most countries, but the areas considered unavailable for wood supply have been growing faster. It appears that some of the "available" forest is being reclassified as "unavailable" as the area of forest under protection status grows.

The economics of wood supply are also strongly influenced by the concentration of the resource, i.e. growing stock per hectare, which in turn is influenced partly by climatic and site conditions and partly by the silvicultural practices of the present and previous forest managers. There are marked differences among countries.

Although the CIS region has by far the largest volume of growing stock of the temperate and boreal zones, its forests are less productive and are used less intensively than those in Europe and North America. Gross annual increment (GAI) in both the CIS and North America is just over 1 billion m³, but when adjusted for natural losses (insects, mortality, fire, etc.), net annual increment (NAI) in North America is about 15 percent greater than in the CIS¹¹ (see Figure 17).

A salient feature of temperate and boreal forests is that in all but two countries (Cyprus and Armenia), fellings are less, often much less, than the NAI in forests available for wood supply. This results in a steady increase of the growing stock in nearly all countries. Only 59 percent of the NAI in Europe and 79 percent in North America is felled. In the CIS, only a very small part (17 percent) of the increment is felled. This is due in part to the remoteness and difficult conditions that make harvesting operations in areas of the Russian Federation very expensive, but it is also due to the widespread collapse of the forest sector institutions in the Russian Federation during the transition process. The level of fellings in 1999 was around 130 million m³, compared with about 400 million m³ (still lower than the increment) at the end of the 1980s.

For the temperate and boreal countries as a whole, the difference between NAI and fellings in forest available for wood supply is 1.2 billion m³. Thus, the volume of wood in temperate and boreal forests is increasing by at least this volume every year, while the same forests are supplying a major part of the world's needs for industrial wood.

Ownership and management. Forest ownership patterns vary considerably. In Europe, Japan and the United States, well over half of the forest and other wooded land is privately owned, in almost all cases by individuals.¹² All forest land in the CIS, 93 percent in Canada, and 60 to 70 percent in Australia and New Zealand is publicly owned. Just over 2.5 percent of all forest and other wooded land - or 62 million ha - in industrialized countries belongs to indigenous and tribal peoples, as defined in the International Labour Organization's Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention. Most of this land is in Australia. There are, however, serious political discussions in a number of countries, including Canada and New Zealand, about giving or returning ownership of very large areas of land, much of which is forest, to indigenous peoples.

In many of the Central and Eastern European countries with economies in transition, the ownership pattern is undergoing substantial change as forest land is restituted to its former owners or is privatized. This is a long and complex process, involving major legal and practical issues.¹³

The size of a forest holding and its management are often linked. In Europe and the United States, there are many small, even minuscule, holdings, as well as some large ones. In Europe, there are about 10.7 million private forest holdings with an average size of 10.6 ha and several million private owners with holdings of less than 3 ha. There is an increasing number of absentee owners who live and work away from their forests and do not rely on them for income. This situation clearly influences the forest management objectives. Helping these owners manage their forests properly has become one of the main objectives of forest policies in many European countries.

Recreation and access. Most industrialized countries indicated that the public has access to government-owned forest for recreation and gathering of forest products for personal use. Commercial use normally requires a permit. Most countries have a policy of open access to privately owned forests as well, but sometimes with restrictions. A minority of countries allow access only with permission of the landowner. In general, there have been no recent significant changes in access to forests, although the increase of privately owned forests in Eastern and Central Europe as well as the increase in protected areas may slightly reduce the areas open to public access.

The importance of forests for leisure and recreational use is increasing across the temperate and boreal zones. Forests are frequently used for picnicking, hiking, camping, riding and mountain biking. Many countries emphasize the importance of forests for recreation near population centres. Forests are also valued for social benefits not directly related to leisure, such as microclimate, noise reduction and aesthetics. Most countries report that demand for the cultural, historic, spiritual and scientific values of their forests is increasing.

CONCLUSIONS

The Forest Resources Assessment 2000, a joint endeavour carried out by FAO in cooperation with its member countries and other partners, particularly UN-ECE, collected and synthesized a vast amount of information on the status and trends in forest area worldwide, on forest management and on additional forest-related variables. It also provided important findings on the status of forest inventories and of other information needed for policy-making and forest management decisions that underpin countries' efforts to work towards sustainable forest management. Despite the acknowledged limitations in the available information on which the assessment is based, FRA 2000 represents the most comprehensive, reliable and authoritative baseline survey of forest resources at the global level, and provides an excellent basis for future improvement of the information on the world's forests.

The major conclusions of FRA 2000 related to the subjects presented in this chapter are as follows.

• The total forest area in 2000 was 3.9 billion ha, of which 95 percent was natural forest and 5 percent was forest plantation.

• For the first time, a uniform definition of forest was used in FAO's global forest assessment. The application of a uniform definition resulted in forest cover figures for some countries that were significantly higher than those of previous assessments. This does not indicate a real increase in forest area. FRA 2000 recalculated the 1990 forest cover figures, using the same definitions and methodologies used for calculating the 2000 figures, to make the comparison between 1990 and 2000 possible. This sets a new baseline for forest cover in 1990.

• About 47 percent of forests worldwide are tropical, 9 percent subtropical, 11 percent temperate and 33 percent boreal.

• The world's natural forests have continued to be converted to other land uses at a very high rate. During the 1990s, the total loss of natural forests (i.e. deforestation plus the conversion of natural forests to forest plantations) was 16.1 million ha per year, of which 15.2 million ha occurred in the tropics.

• The area of forest plantations increased by an average of 3.1 million ha per year during the 1990s. Half of this increase was the result of afforestation on land previously under non-forest land use, whereas the other half resulted from conversion of natural forest.

• At the global level, the net change in forest area for the 1990s was an estimated -9.4 million ha per year (equivalent to 0.2 percent of total forests). This was the combined effect of a deforestation rate of 14.6 million ha per year and a rate of forest increase of 5.2 million ha per year.

• According to reported numbers, the estimated net loss of forest (i.e. the balance of the loss of forest area by deforestation and the gain through afforestation and the natural expansion of forest) was lower in the 1990s than in the 1980s. Although the rate of change figures for the two decades are not directly comparable because of changes in definitions and methodologies and updated inventory information, there is reasonable evidence that the net rate of forest loss has decreased.

• The above-ground woody biomass in forests amounts to 420 billion tonnes (dry), of which 27 percent is in Brazil alone. The standing volume of forests is highest in Central America and Central Europe.

• The concept of sustainable forest management - and efforts to achieve it - continued to gain momentum around the world during the past decade. As of 2000, 149 countries were involved in international initiatives to develop and implement criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management, although the degree of implementation varies considerably. The area of forests worldwide under formal or informal management plans, another indicator of efforts to improve forest management, increased. Furthermore, interest in forest certification increased; a number of forest certification schemes were established during the past decade and the total global area of certified forests grew to 80 million ha by the end of 2000.

• An estimated 12 percent of the world's forests are under protected area status (as defined by IUCN Categories I to VI).

• FAO used the best available and most relevant information on forest resources for FRA 2000. Although some countries had notably improved their inventories over the past decade and the number of reports on forest resources increased in the 1990s, many countries still lack the basic data needed to assess accurately the state and changes of their forests. Most countries updated their forest cover estimates during the 1990s, often through remote sensing mapping approaches, but in many cases the methodology was not directly compatible with previous surveys, making change estimates difficult. There is a scarcity of comparable multiple-date inventories and a need to improve both the accuracy and depth of information provided in forest inventories.

Lessons learned from global forest assessments provide the basis for the development of new and better ways of generating reliable information on the world's forests. There is a pressing need, however, to continue to seek more accurate and objective information for future global surveys, and to strengthen countries' capacity to carry out forest inventories and monitor changes in their forest resources. An improved information base on forest resources is critical for the development and implementation of policies and programmes in sustainable forest management. FAO will seek to further its work with countries and other partners in this field through the development of new techniques and the training of professionals in forest inventory.

 1 The FAO Forestry Department Web site is the most up-to-date source of information on all aspects of the assessment and contains information on all countries (www.fao.org/forestry/fo/fra/index.jsp). The results of the assessment of temperate and boreal forests in industrialized countries are also available in UN-ECE/FAO (2000b).

2 The countries considered to be in the European region for the purposes of the assessment coordinated by the UN-ECE include all those listed under Europe in Annex 2 except members of the CIS, plus Cyprus, Israel and Turkey.

3 The Kotka expert consultation (referred to as Kotka III) advised FAO to consider conducting the remote sensing survey at the global level with about 350 sample units. Financial restrictions, however, limited the work to the tropics, except for some pilot activities.

4 FAO developed a network of cooperators who were instrumental in the development of the maps. Major collaborators involved in the effort included EROS Data Center of the United States; the World Conservation Monitoring Centre, based in the United Kingdom; the Institute for Applied Research and Analysis, in Austria; the Laboratory of Terrestrial Ecology of France; the Canadian Center for Remote Sensing; the United States Forest Service; and the Australian Bureau of Rural Sciences.

5 A small number of classification schemes have been developed for use at the global level, including Bailey, Holdridge, Köppen and Thornwaite, but none of these is available digitally or is registered to a geometrically correct map base. Köppen's classification scheme has been the most widespread and longest used.

6 Included in natural forests are semi-natural forests, the dominant forest type in many areas, particularly temperate and boreal forests in industrialized countries (see UN-ECE/FAO, 2000b).

7 The full name is the Non-Legally Binding Authoritative Statement on Principles for a Global Consensus on the Management, Conservation and Sustainable Development of All Types of Forest.

8 The exception is the Montreal Process, which does not specify the area managed according to a management plan per se, but, rather, the percentage of forest area managed for specific objectives.

9 The use of two different definitions makes it difficult to compare the situation between industrialized countries and developing countries and to derive a global total of forests under management plans. In addition, some industrialized countries interpreted the definition in different ways. Moreover, many developing countries did not include forests in protected areas in the area under management, and some countries excluded plantations. This points to a need for further refinement and clarification of the definitions for future reporting on the area of forest under management plans.

10 Cameroon, Ghana, Guyana, Indonesia, Malaysia and Myanmar.

11 This may be an overestimate, as Canada was not able to provide data on natural losses.

12 Only in Canada, Finland, Japan, Sweden and the United States are more than 1 million ha owned by forest industries.

13 The issues include the difficulty of finding and accurately identifying the former owners or their heirs 50 years after expropriation, setting out property boundaries on the ground, and providing support and guidance to thousands of new forest owners, many of whom retain a suspicion of central authority.