15th World Forestry Congress High-Level Dialogue: Building a green, healthy and resilient future with forests
by Dr QU Dongyu, FAO Director-General
02/05/2022
15th World Forestry Congress
High-Level Dialogue: Building a green, healthy and resilient future with forests
Remarks
By
Dr QU Dongyu, FAO Director-General
Seoul, Korea
2 May 2022
Excellences,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
1. The world faces big challenges linked to the degradation of our natural resources:
• the intensifying climate crisis,
• biodiversity loss,
• growing food insecurity, and
• the social and economic downturn due to the COVID-19 pandemic, among others.
2. We must overcome these challenges, and we can,
3. By creating a green, healthy and resilient future with forests.
4. Sustainable forest conservation, management and restoration is key.
5. We have made some progress on forests: we saw important commitments at the UN Food Systems Summit, and at COP26.
6. This Congress is a unique opportunity to scale up action to match these commitments.
7. To support and guide this action, today FAO is launching the new report on The State of the World’s Forests 2022 – Forestry and Green Recovery, Building Inclusive and Sustainable Green Economies.
8. The report presents 3 mutually-reinforcing pathways to achieve sustainable, healthy forests.
9. The first pathway is halting deforestation and maintaining forests.
10. From 2015 to 2020, 10 million hectares of forest were lost or degraded each year - this has driven climate change.
11. Halting deforestation could cut greenhouse gas emissions by 14% – a significant contribution to keeping global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celcius.
12. And, at the same time, we could safeguard more than half the Earth’s terrestrial biodiversity.
13. The second pathway is restoring degraded lands and expanding agroforestry.
14. 1.5 billion hectares of degraded land can be restored: restoring just 350 million hectares could deliver trillions of dollars in ecosystem services.
15. Increasing tree cover could boost agricultural productivity on another one billion hectares.
16. This is crucial, as agricultural production must increase by 50% percent by 2050 to meet growing food demands.
17. The third pathway is sustainably using forests and building green value chains.
18. This will help meet future demand for materials, and underpins sustainable economies.
19. Using sustainable wood in construction, for example, can store carbon while building more-resilient local economies.
20. Smallholders, local communities and Indigenous Peoples – who manage nearly half of the world’s forest and farm landscapes – are crucial for scaling-up implementation.
21. Some 33 million people – that is, 1% of global employment – are estimated to work directly in the formal and informal forest sector.
22. One-third of the world‘s population (about 2.6 billion people) relies on wood and other traditional fuels for household cooking.
23. Wild-harvested forest foods add to the food security and nutrition of people living near forests, especially in remote areas in the tropics and subtropics, who also earn one-quarter of their income from forests.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
24. It is time for the world to invest in our forests: politically, financially and technologically.
25. Finance for these 3 pathways must at least triple by 2030 to meet climate, biodiversity and land degradation neutrality targets.
26. This includes new investments through climate finance, green recovery programmes and the private sector.
27. Re-orienting incentives for agricultural producers, which stands at 540 billion US Dollars per year, can make a big difference.
28. Forests and agriculture can mutually support each other – over 20 developing countries have shown it is possible.
29. Restoring and sustainably managing forests and trees calls for up-to-date and reliable data for effective and appropriate decision-making.
30. Tomorrow, FAO will unveil the results of our Remote Sensing Survey, a wide-ranging collaborative study involving 800 national experts from 126 countries analysing 430,000 samples, as a complement to the FAO 2020 Global Forest Resource Assessment.
Dear Colleagues,
31. Healthy and thriving forests mean healthy and thriving societies and economies.
32. And partnerships will be the key to success.
33. We need to break out of silos.
34. We need to work together to transform our agrifood systems to be more efficient, more inclusive, more resilient and more sustainable,
35. And we must ensure that agrifood systems transformation and forest protection, restoration and sustainable management go hand in hand.
36. FAO is strengthening its work with goverments, the private sector, academia, local communities, women and youth.
37. Together, we can unlock the full potential of forests to achieve better production, better nutrition, a better environment, and a better life for all, leaving no one behind.
38. Thank you.