Countries

Forests and the forestry sector

Resources
The Republic of the Marshall Islands is a sprawling Micronesian archipelago that includes 29 coral atolls and 5 table reefs, all essentially flat and composed of coral limestone. Land area is 181 km2, but the islands are scattered across 2 000 000 km2 of ocean. Because they are spread 1 150 km from north to south, there is a marked moisture gradient, from semiarid in the north to very humid in the south. The vegetation is conditioned by moisture availability and salt spray exposure, and has been affected by occasional severe hurricanes, several thousand years of human occupation, and more recently, World War II activities, nuclear testing and conversion of land to coconut plantations, resulting in a highly altered landscape.

Forests, as such, are virtually non-existent although a wide variety of trees and plants are present. Mangrove is one of the main forest types. Woody vegetation communities are restricted to mixed broadleaf forests and a variety of mono-dominant tree and scrub communities. Around 60 percent of the Marshall Islands¿ land area is covered by coconut palms and breadfruit. Other dominant species include Pandanus tectorius (screwpine) and Terminalia spp. No endemic species of vegetation are known.

There are no large-scale forest industries in the Marshall Islands. Small quantities of wood and paper products are imported.

Constraints
The forestry sector of the Marshall Islands, as well as many small island developing states (SIDS), faces the problems of:

• limited land area and natural resources;
• vulnerability to environmental disasters, such as cyclones and hurricanes;
• high species endemism but low occurrence of individual species, leading to high risk for loss of biological diversity;
• high human population density, usually concentrated in lowland areas, which increases pressure on already limited resources;
• economic constraints due to relatively small scale;
• institutional constraints (including high levels of migration, particularly of skilled human resources).

Last updated: August 2002