December, 1954
An International Review of Forestry and Forest Products
FAO - The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Forest resources and population
Some one thousand specialists from all over the world gathered at FAO headquarters in Rome last September to attend a World Population Conference sponsored by the United Nations and its specialized agencies. One of the many topics given consideration was the adequacy of the world's forests, as a natural renewable resource, for a world population that might reach 3,600 million by 1980.
The inventory of forest resources, recently concluded by FAO and reported in the last issue of Unasylva, showed that only two-thirds of the world's accessible forests were now in use as sources of timber and other forest products. There appeared to be a reserve of around 640 million hectares of forest accessible but not yet exploited, and a second reserve of 2,140 million hectares of forest not yet accessible - that is a total of some 2.78 thousand million hectares. On this evidence, there would appear to be ample forest resources to provide over the long term for the requirements of a far greater world population than to-day's, even assuming an average yearly wood consumption much in excess of the present three-fifths of a cubic meter of industrial and fuel wood per head.
But these figures of forest still in reserve need to be interpreted with circumspection. Around half of the total must be regarded as fulfilling primarily a protective role and is not to be brought into full reckoning as a potential source of raw material. The remaining 1,400 million hectares also include considerable areas in northerly climates or on poor soils where productivity must be relatively low. Some areas, too, must inevitably be converted to agriculture.
Again, wood is heavy and bulky and often uneconomic to transport over long distances, so that timber from the Amazon cannot readily be regarded as available to satisfy, for example, the needs of the Far East. Indeed, wood is scarce and expensive in the relatively nearby highlands of South America despite the vast areas of untouched forest in the Amazon.
Moreover, the large number of forest tree species that exist, especially in the tropics, have a great diversity of chemical and physical properties which offer an additional difficulty to the full use of undeveloped forests. Lack of knowledge as to useful qualities or possible manufacturing processes, often bars from economic exploitation forest resources otherwise physically accessible.
Nevertheless, since population can clearly not be kept down to present levels of production of wood, or of any other commodity for that matter, production must be brought up to the level of population. So forestry and industry have great and various tasks ahead to match useful output of wood and all other products derived from wood to real needs. We know how this can be done. But it is essential to remember that, in this context, we happen to be those who possess the knowledge and capital and mostly live in those parts of the world already highly advanced. It is in the areas of the more undeveloped forests or of practically no forests at all where the greatest increases in population are likely to occur in the course of the next few generations.
Cover photograph: There are several centers in Iraq which, because of their favorable topographic situation, high precipitation and numerous springs, are important for poplar cultivation. Shaqlawa, shown here, has been recommended as a site for a new poplar nursery. The photo was taken from the regional forestry office by E. Allegri of the Italian Forest Service in the course of an FAO mission to advise on poplar cultivation (See "Work of FAO").
This electronic document has been scanned using optical character recognition (OCR) software and careful manual recorrection. Even if the quality of digitalisation is high, the FAO declines all responsibility for any discrepancies that may exist between the present document and its original printed version.
John Bowers, Director of UNESCO Group Training Scheme for Fundamental Education
Forestry
and fundamental education - An experiment in Mysore, India
R. S. Campbell, Chief, Division of Range Management Research, Southern
Forest Experiment Station, United States Forest Service, New Orleans, Louisiana
Fire in relation
to forest grazing
C. W. Scott, FAO Technical Assistance Officer Professor of Timber Utilization,
University of Chile, Santiago
Radiata pine in Chile
H. Glaser, Lecturer, Forestry Faculty, University of Göttingen, Hannover
- Münden
Physiology of
manual work in forestry
N. T. Mirov
Composition
of turpentines of Mexican pines
S. B. Show, U.S. Forest Service (retired) and latterly of the Forestry Division,
FAO
Research programs
Commodity report - Forest products, 1951-1954
Third conference on wood technology
FAO/ECE joint working party on logging techniques and training of forest workers
Technical assistance notes
Protection from avalanches
Joint Subcommission on Mediterranean forestry problems 'Silva Mediterranea'
General
Fundamental science
Silviculture
Forest injuries and protection
Mensuration and surveying
Forest management
Industry and trade
Forest products and their utilization
Forest policy
International Union for the Protection of Nature
Forest services of member countries - Provisional list of addresses
