Deforestation

Rwanda, the most densely populated nation in Sub-Saharan Africa, has launched a national plan to reverse the current degradation of soil, land, water and forest resources by 2035 while boosting economic development growth.

FAO's State of the World’s Forests report says the average rate of loss of forest cover in Central America, which is made up of Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala City, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama, was 1.19 percent a year between 2000 and 2010, compared to a global rate of just 0.13 percent.

The region's forested area shrank from 21.9 million hectares in 2000 to 19.4 million hectares in 2010.

British Columbia is blessed by nature with a vast, ecologically rich forest estate that also has been a source of sustained economic wealth for more than a century. But today there are troubling signs that the most important of natural assets is facing challenges never before seen.

A paradigm shift in global forest management is needed to halt tropical deforestation, said Global Witness at the start of the UN’s International Year of Forests. The status quo effectively legalises the destruction of natural forests by logging operations, subsidised by tax-dollars. Without efforts to overturn this, international action to prevent irreversible climate change will founder and the livelihoods of over a billion forest-dependent people will be at risk.