Forests Sine
Qua Non for Human Lives: Few Facts from Recent Reports
The forests have
great importance for survival of human beings as we depend on forests
because forests provide us wood, air, and also offer watershed protection,
prevent soil erosion and mitigate climate change.
It is estimated that the world’s forests
house more than 50 percent of the world’s plants and animal species. The
highest biodiversity ever recorded on land is in the Amazon rainforest,
specifically the area where the Amazon meets the Andes Mountains in Peru and
Ecuador. The forests in Borneo, New Guinea, north-western South America and
Central America, and the Congo Basin are other hotbeds of species richness.
Also the statistics reveal that some of these forests accommodate more than 300
species of trees and plants in each hectare. While
the exact number is still being debated, scientists agree that the world’s
forests have hundreds of billions of trees. According to an estimate in 2015 in
the world there were three trillion trees, including 1.4 trillion in the
tropics and subtropics, 700 billion in boreal areas, and 600 billion in
temperate regions. It is estimated that 15.3 billion trees are cut down every
year and 46 percent of the world’s trees have been cleared over the past 12,000
years. It is pertinent to mention that boreal areas comprise the northern biotic area characterized
especially by dominance of coniferous forests. On the other hand, the temperate
regions are part of the earth's surface lying between the tropic of Cancer and
the Arctic Circle in the Northern Hemisphere or between the tropic of Capricorn
and the Antarctic Circle in the Southern Hemisphere, and having a climate that
is warm in the summer, cold in the winter, and moderate in the spring and fall.
Based on the recent publication few facts are presented here. According to the latest data based on the
Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020, the proportion of forest area of the
world’s land area has gradually dwindled from 31.9 percent in 2000 (4.2 billion
hectares) to 31.5 percent in 2010, further declined to 31.2 percent (4.1
billion hectares) in 2020. Also the data reveal that forest area losses
amounted to almost 100 million hectares in the past two decades, however the
rate of loss has slightly slowed down within the past ten years. Some of the
facts across the world are presented for the benefit of readers and
researchers.
· Most of Asia as well as Europe and Northern America showed an overall
increase in forest area from the year 2000 to year 2020, due to afforestation
and landscape restoration efforts and natural expansion of forests in those
regions.
· Large forest area losses were reported in the past twenty years in Latin
America and the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa and South-Eastern Asia. These
losses were mainly due to the conversion of forest land for agricultural use
for crops and grazing.
·
Least developed countries (LDCs) and landlocked developing
countries (LLDCs) are particularly affected by forest area losses.
·
In Latin America and the Caribbean, the forest losses decreased in
2010-2020 compared to the previous decade, while increases were observed
especially in Sub-Saharan Africa and South-Eastern Asia.
The following websites have been
consulted for writing the article:
1)
https://news.mongabay.com/2016/03/10-facts-about-forests-for-international-forest-day
2)
http://www.fao.org/sdg-progress-report/en/#sdg-15
Dr Shankar Chatterjee, Hyderabad
