Скачать или смотреть MaximsNewsNetwork: U.N. DEFORESTATION REPORT (FAO) (UNTV)

MaximsNewsNetwork: 25 March 2010 - UNTV: United Nations, New York - The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) today released its most comprehensive forest review to date assessing global forest resources in 233 countries and areas.

According to the report, while world deforestation has decreased over the past ten years, this destructive phenomenon continues at an alarmingly high rate in many countries.

The world's total forest area is just over four billion hectares or 31 percent of the Earths total land area. The study reports that around 13 million hectares of forests were converted to other uses or lost through natural causes each year between 2000 and 2010 as compared to around 16 million hectares per year during the 1990s. The net annual loss of forests in 2000-2010 is equivalent to an area about the size of Costa Rica.

Ambitious tree planting programmes in countries such as China, India, the United States and Viet Nam combined with natural expansion of forests in some regions have added more than 7 million hectares of new forests annually.

In addition, Brazil and Indonesia, which had the highest loss of forests in the 1990s, have significantly reduced their deforestation rates.

More than 900 specialists from 178 countries were involved in the Global Forest Resources Assessment 2010. The full report of this Assessment will be released in October 2010.

A remote-sensing survey of forests, led by FAO, sampling some 13,500 sites over a period of 15 years, will provide even more accurate data on global and regional rates of deforestation by the end of 2011.