New FAO report reveals speeding deforestation

[Mika Huettner]

Despite the alarming conclusions of the UN's latest State of the World's Forests, the mainstream media has devoted surprisingly little attention to the report. Snowed under by other news developments as it may have been, global deforestation is by no means insignificant. It's taking place at shocking rates, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)'s bi-annual report reveals.

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http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/39611

[Mika Huettner]

not necessarily. Reforestation - especially with non-native tree species - might lead to lower groundwater tables. But adapted tree species can indeed be valuable for reforestation for adaptation purposes. I would agree that REDD can also be labelled an adaptation issue. For me as pseudo-economist it is of special interest if you could quantify this value of the standing forest - allowing for a more targeted investment in forests crucial for adaptation and mitigation as well. I think Christian (Seiler) is doing great research in this regard, since he explores the watershed services of standing forests in Bolivia. In the end, I believe that not only carbon payments but also adaptation service payments might arise from REDD. Interestingly, so far there is little research done on adaptation and REDD. So if you find some papers, let me know.

[eric]

Quite alarming! Here the direct website for the FAO report:
http://www.fao.org/docrep/011/i0350e/i0350e00.HTM
Not for nothing, current discussion at the UNFCCC regarding climate change adaptation in developing nations is also considering synergies between adaptation strategies and REDD. What exactly this would entail is of course debatable, however it could mean extra adaptation frameworks or projects, financed by industrial nations, could include forests. Because reducing, or dare I say, "avoiding" deforestation also increases resilience to climate change impacts (preventing desertification, stablizing mircoclimate, reducing impacts of tropical storms on coastal areas) there might be some room for cooperation here. But could you argue reducing deforestation is an adaptation? Perhaps reforesting is more suitable in this case?

[Mika Huettner]

As only some of you might know: we also have activists from wikiwoods in our network: www.wikiwoods.org ....currently they are only in Germany, but anyone from other countries interested in this concept?

[Johho]

Hi folks! I have a lok at http://reforestation.net/ from time to time. there is a crazy counter, vizualizing the global deforestation rate, about 1000 trees in 6 seconds, based on FAO estimations on global forest stock and deforestation rate. I calculated that the counter might be at zero in about 500 years. That seems to be far future, but we'll face more severe effects of global deforestation on a very local scale if the counter only continues the next two years or five... which would mean about 5.256.000.000 trees cut per year. Well, not sure if the rate and estimate is perfectly reliable, but www.reforestation.net mobilizes to counteract by planting trees and educate youths and even old-school-farmers and increase environmental awareness and appropiate behaviour. Terre-des-Jeunes is a global network with local groups presently active in Ivory Coast, Marocco, Canada and Haiti, it seems. explore it, spread it ! thanks a lot!