resource
Nov. 1 2011
Resource
Forest and Mangrove Area (Keeping Track)
Description
Forest area has decreased by 300 million ha since 1990, or an area larger than ArgentinaForests currently cover around 30% of the Earth’s land mass. Although the rate of deforestation is slowing down, large areas of primary forest and other naturally regenerated forests are declining, especially in South America and Africa, while forested areas in Europe and Asia are stable or increasing due to large- scale afforestation programmes. Around 13 million hectares of forest were converted to other uses or lost through natural causes each year between 2000 and 2010, compared to 16 million hectares per year during the preceding decade (FAO 2010). This results not only in biodiversity loss, but also contributes 12-15% to global warming by releasing CO2 into the atmosphere and hampering further CO2 storage (van der Werf and others 2009, UCSUSA 2011). “Millions of hectares of tropical forest are cleared every year to make way for agriculture, pastures and other non-forest uses, or are degraded by unsustainable or illegal logging and other poor land-use practices” (ITTO 2011). Also in decline since several decades ago are mangrove forests—important from social, economic and biological points of view. For example, “mangrove forests act as extremely effective carbon sinks, able to absorb [nearly 100] tonnes of carbon per hectare, or more than three times the absorptive capacity of non-mangrove forests” (UNDP 2011b). Between 1990 and 2010, 3% of mangrove extent was lost, mostly as a result of coastal development and conversions to agriculture and aquaculture (rice fields, shrimp farms). Using high-resolution satellite imagery, the extent of mangroves in 2000 was even found to be 13% less (blue point on the graph) than country statistics show (Giri and others 2010).
This graphic is part of the publication Keeping Track of Our Changing Environment.
