Chiang Mai/ Bangkok 16 October 2007: Asian countries will need to make dramatic adjustments in how they manage forests in the face of rapid globalization according to leading UN forestry experts. The world’s forests are linked by issues of climate change, products trade, water management, tourism and cross-border movement of pests and diseases in ways that seemed unimaginable just a few years ago.

“Gone are the days when foresters could focus only on their own country, ignoring developments elsewhere,” according to Jan Heino, Assistant Director-General, Head of the Forestry Department of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, who opened a three-day conference on the future of forests in Asia and the Pacific today in Chiang Mai.

“We are living in a borderless world and what happens to forests and forestry in one country is very much dependent on what happens in other countries, whether it is increasing demand for wood and wood products, logging bans, taxes on exports, changes in exchange rates, invasive species or a host of other trans-boundary issues,” Heino emphasized. “How well countries respond to these challenges in the next few years will seal the fate of forests in the region for decades to come.”

The Asia-Pacific region has lost about 10 million hectares of its forests in the past 15 years, largely in the drive to supply increasing demands for agricultural and forest products, according to FAO. Recently, new threats to forests have emerged in the push to develop bioenergy resources from such crops as oil palm.

While deforestation continues at an alarming rate in most countries of the region, a few countries, including China, India and Vietnam, have reversed the trend and are increasing their areas of forest. “This has been possible largely as a result of rapid economic growth and increasing wealth that has relieved pressure on forests and land in these countries,” according to C.T.S. Nair, FAO’s chief forest economist.

“ How countries manage their forests is increasingly becoming a matter of international concern on account of the wide ranging impacts deforestation and forest degradation have on climate and water resources,” according to Jagmohan Maini, former coordinator of the United Nations Forum on Forests, in his keynote address to the conference.

About two hundred and fifty experts from throughout the Asia-Pacific region are participating in the Chiang Mai conference, which aims to assess how the future is unfolding, the likely changes in the demands that society is placing on forests, and what may be done to address the emerging challenges and opportunities.

The conference has been organized as part of the Asia-Pacific Forestry Commission’s Forestry Sector Outlook Study, which aims to articulate the priorities and strategies for the sector to the year 2020 taking into account the larger changes in the Asia-Pacific region.