International accords on saving vulnerable forests are having little impact because they do not attack the core causes (hovedårsagerne) such as growing demand for biofuels and food crops, a new report said Sunday.
With Africa and South American alone losing 7,4 million hectares of forest a year, the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) said in their “Embracing complexity: Meeting the challenges of international forest governance report” that a drastic change of policy is needed by the UN and governments.
The IUFRO study said a key problem was that deforestation, from the Amazon to the Congo, was often caused by economic pressures far away. A popular global brand of cookies, for instance, uses palm oil grown on deforested land in Indonesia.
IUFRO urged policies of “embracing complexity” to help protect forests, including educating consumers, rather than rely on a one-size-fits-all mechanism such as carbon storage. It called for better efforts, for instance, to aid indigenous peoples, whose livelihoods depend on healthy forests.
The magazine “Bioscience Technology” writes that despite noting the pitfalls (huller/skavanker) surrounding REDD and other accords, the report reflects optimism that conditions are ripe for reducing forest destruction world-wide, and with an international effort playing an important role.
The positive forces include an unprecedented amount of attention worldwide to the problem of illegal logging and a widespread acceptance of the concept of sustainable forest management.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
Man kan se hele IUFROs rapport via
http://www.iufro.org/publications/view/article/2011/01/24/new-gfep-assessment-report-iufro-world-series-28
