Global Forest Resources Assessment 2015 – How are the world’s forests changing?
FAO
Rome, 2015 :: 56 pages
[Excerpt from Foreword]
The contributions of forests to the well-being of humankind are extraordinarily vast and far-reaching. Forests play a fundamental role in combating rural poverty, ensuring food security and providing decent livelihoods; they offer promising mid-term green growth opportunities; and they deliver vital long-term environmental services, such as clean air and water, conservation of biodiversity and mitigation of climate change.

Forestry has an important place in FAO’s Strategic Framework, which strongly promotes an integrated approach to addressing the major problems that concern food production, rural development, land use and sustainable management of natural resources.

However, in order to manage our forests wisely for the benefit of current and future generations, it is vital to have a clear understanding of the situation of the world’s forests and ongoing trends.

The Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA) allows us to do exactly that. Since the first FRA was published in 1948, FAO has reported periodically on the situation of the world’s forests, serving the international community with the best information and techniques available.

FRA 2015 arrives in a decisive year for forests and sustainable development. This year the development agenda towards 2030 is being defined, including the adoption of new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Forests and their role in protecting and restoring terrestrial ecosystems and their services are essential for the post-2015 development agenda.

A global and inclusive climate change agreement – in which forests are a key part – is also expected to be reached at the Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to be held in Paris in December 2015. The year 2015 also
features the XIV World Forestry Congress in Durban, the biggest international forest event of this decade – to be held in Africa for the first time – where we are honoured to launch FRA 2015.

FRA 2015 shows a very encouraging tendency towards a reduction in the rates of deforestation and carbon emissions from forests and increases in capacity for sustainable forest management. The reliability of the information collected has also improved enormously – presently national forest inventories apply to some 81 percent of global forest area, a substantial increase over the past 10 years.

Two broad conclusions can be drawn: 1) we have a wealth of reliable information today on the situation of the world’s forests; and 2) the direction of change is positive, with many impressive examples of progress in all regions of the world. However this positive trend needs to be strengthened, especially in the countries that are lagging behind…

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Press Release
World deforestation slows down as more forests are better managed
FAO publishes key findings of global forest resources assessment
7 September 2015, Durban/Rome – The world’s forests continue to shrink as populations increase and forest land is converted to agriculture and other uses, but over the past 25 years the rate of net global deforestation has slowed down by more than 50 percent, FAO said in a report published today.

Some 129 million hectares of forest – an area almost equivalent in size to South Africa – have been lost since 1990, according to FAO’s most comprehensive forest review to date, The Global Forest Resources Assessment 2015.

It noted however, that an increasing amount of forest areas have come under protection while more countries are improving forest management. This is often done through legislation and includes the measuring and monitoring of forest resources and a greater involvement of local communities in planning and in developing policies.

The FAO study covers 234 countries and territories and was presented at this week’s World Forestry Congress in Durban, South Africa…