http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE70N00320110124

 

(Reuters) - World efforts to slow deforestationshould do more to address underlying causes such as rising demand for crops orbiofuels, widening from a U.N. focus on using trees to fight climate change, astudy said Monday.

 

It said a series of projects to protect forests hadhad limited success in recent decades -- U.N. figures show that 13 millionhectares (32 million acres) of forest were lost every year from 2000-09, anarea equivalent to the size of Greece.

The report by the International Union of ForestResearch Organizations (IUFRO) suggested that the current U.N.-led efforts toprotect forests had too narrow a focus on promoting trees as stores of carbondioxide, the main greenhouse gas.

"Our findings suggest that disregarding theimpact of forests on sectors such as agriculture and energy will doom any newinternational efforts whose goal is to conserve forests and slow climatechange," said Jeremy Rayner, who chaired the IUFRO panel and is aprofessor at the University of Saskatchewan.

Deforestation accounts for perhaps 10 percent of allemissions of greenhouse gases from human activities. Trees soak up carbon asthey grow but release it when they burn or decay.

The IUFRO study said a key problem was thatdeforestation, from the Amazon to the Congo, was often caused by economicpressures far away. A popular global brand of cookies, for instance, uses palmoil grown on deforested land in Indonesia.

COMPLEXITY

IUFRO urged policies of "embracingcomplexity" to help protect forests, including educating consumers, ratherthan rely on a one-size-fits-all mechanism such as carbon storage.

It called for better efforts, for instance, to aidindigenous peoples, whose livelihoods depend on healthy forests.

Among promising measures were amendments to the U.S.Lacey Act, which makes it illegal to import wood known to come from stolentimber. Brazil, for instance, has enacted procedures to tackle deforestation inthe Amazon, it said.

The IUFRO report will be issued at U.N. talks in NewYork this week marking the start of the U.N.'s International Year of Forests.

Almost 200 nations agreed at a meeting in Cancun, Mexico,last month to step up efforts to protect forests with a plan that aims to put aprice on the carbon stored in trees, while helping indigenous peoples andpromoting sustainable use.

Authors of the IUFRO study said that the U.N. plan,known as REDD+, was promising. "Our worry is that this won't beenough," Benjamin Cashore, a forestry expert at Yale University and anIUFRO author, told Reuters.

He said that governments often simplistically placedtoo much faith in the lastest idea, like carbon markets.

He said many past schemes had failed to brakedeforestation, such as boycotts of some timber in the 1980s by rich consumers,or an international tropical timber agreement that sought to unite producersand consumers.