The World
The study showed that there were just under 40 million km² of forest in the world, and just over 3 million in IUCN protected areas categories I-VI (Table 1, Fig. 1. See also Fig. 2 which shows the data for the regions without the world total, which gives a better resolution to the figure). This represents a proportion of 8% of the world's forests in protected areas of this category range. The IUCN category criteria are outlined in an annex. The assignment of a protected area to a category depends upon its legal status. This may not reflect its effective status on the ground, and there are probably a significant number of areas that are in these IUCN categories where the laws are actually not enforced. This study has not attempted to address this problem, and therefore some forest types which appear on paper here to be well protected are in fact not (see Methods).
Three of the 12 regions in this study had much more forest than all the others, North America, Russia and South America. These all had in the region of 8 million km² of forest. Africa had the next greatest amount at over 5 million. North America, Russia and South America had more forest than the sum of all of the other regions.
The region with the lowest protection figure was Russia at 2%.Insular South East Asia had the highest at 17%. Regions with 10 or more percent in IUCN protected areas categories I-VI were the Caribbean, Central America, Continental South and South East Asia, Insular South East Asia and South America. Those with less than 10% were Africa, Australasia, Europe, the Far East, the Middle East, North America and Russia.
The three regions with 5 or less percent of their forest under protection were Russia, the Middle East and the Far East. Although the lack of data for protected areas could be a contributing factor to these low figures it is apparent that to conserve the world's biodiversity more forest protection would be desirable in these regions. Some of the countries the Middle East region contained were former USSR member states, and these together with Russia have recently been actual or potential recipients of international aid for their infrastructure development and land use planning. There were a number of these former USSR countries in the Europe region also, and some of these were found to have a very low percentage of their forests under protection (e.g. Albania 1.2%, Azerbaijan 0%, Bosnia Herzegovina 1%) which contributed to the low percentage figure for Europe as a whole (8%). Figures of total and protected forest area for all countries in the study are shown in Table 2
There were 25 types of forest in the world, including the categories for sparse trees and parkland, disturbed forest, native species plantations and exotic species plantations. For definitions of each forest type in the world used in this study see Methods. There were 15 tropical types and 10 non-tropical types.
Fig. 3 shows that the non-tropical evergreen needleleaf forest covered more area than any of the other forest types. The next greatest was tropical lowland forest. The two next most extensive forest types were non-tropical deciduous broadleaf forest and non-tropical deciduous needleleaf forest, both of which covered less than half of the amount of area of the non-tropical evergreen needleleaf forest.
The least abundant forest type was the non-tropical native species plantations. There were no forests in the non-tropical source datasets that translated to native species plantations, so this category is not present at all in the non-tropical forest types in Fig. 3. This illustrates the difficulties in estimating the amount of forest in the world that has been planted, often due to differences in definitions for plantations. The natural forest types in the world that were most restricted in their extent were tropical needleleaf forest and tropical mixed needleleaf/broadleaf forest. The next least widespread types were mangroves, freshwater swamp forest (tropical and non-tropical), tropical sclerophyllous dry forests, tropical thorn forests and non-tropical evergreen broadleaf forests.
The forest types varied in their percentage protection from 0.9% for the non-tropical deciduous needleleaf forest to 22.6% for the non-tropical evergreen broadleaf forests. Seventeen of the 25 forest types recorded had less than 10% of their areas under protection in IUCN categories I-VI. Over 4% of both the exotic species plantations categories were protected. This should be examined, because the IUCN protected areas categories I-VI should not include these artificial forests. Intact natural forest types that were less than 5% protected were tropical mixed needleleaf/broadleaf forest, tropical sclerophyllous dry forest, non-tropical freshwater swamp forest and non-tropical deciduous needleleaf forest.
Of the natural forest types that were least extensive (listed above), the following types had less than 10% protected: tropical and non-tropical freshwater swamp forests, tropical needleleaf forest, tropical mixed needleleaf/broadleaf forest, tropical sclerophyllous dry forest and tropical thorn forest. According to the above data, considering their limited extent and their lack of protection, these forest types should be a priority for including in new protected areas.
In an attempt to impartially indicate natural, undisturbed forest variants (defined as a forest type in an ecological zone, see Methods) which may be under the most immediate threat of destruction, a list was drawn up for each region that pinpointed those under 100 km2 in extent with none protected. These are variants of relatively limited extent and which do not even have any legal protection; possibly much less actual protection. The number of these ranged from three out of 72 variants in Australasia and three out of 45 variants in Insular SE Asia to 27 of 68 variants in the Far East. The percentages of the total variants in each region that were under 100km2 with none protected were lowest in North America, Australasia and Europe, and highest in the Far East (by quite a margin), with the Caribbean, South America and the Middle East next highest (Fig. 4). According to these results, the forest biodiversity in the Far East is most in need of action to include unique forests in protected areas systems. The Caribbean is next, the Middle East and South America follow, with Africa and Russia close behind. No region had a percentage of zero: i.e. all regions had some variants that were within the defined parameters. The regions with the lowest percentages were North America, Australasia and Europe. This indicated that these latter regions had a preponderance of countries with governments that emphasised protected areas systems planning and protected areas designation. However these results must be interpreted with caution because, as pointed out in the Introduction, many of these small, unprotected forest variants might not be truly different from other variants which were larger and may have adequate protection. This aspect of the study should be further developed to highlight the truly unique, rare and endangered forest variants. Time restraints for this study did not permit the authors to fully research and interpret the results.
Forest distribution in relation to people
Fig. 5 and Table 1 show the ratio of forest to people (United Nations statistics) in the twelve regions and in the world (total). The overall figure for the world was seven: there are seven km² of forest for every thousand people, or 0.7ha for each person. Four regions had far more than this: three were those with the most forest: Russia, North America and South America, and the fourth was not Africa which has the next most forest but Australasia, which had the seventh greatest amount of forest of all the regions. Australasia actually had the highest forest to people ratio at 65, and Russia the next highest at 56 (Table 1). Africa and Central America had similar figures which were close to the overall world figure, Insular South East Asia and Europe had the next highest figures, and the Caribbean, Continental South and South East Asia, the Far East and the Middle East regions had the lowest figures, all below 2.
Dividing the forest:people ratio figures into three categories: low, medium and high, and presenting the percentage range of forest under protection in each region into the same three categories, the two regions which had both low forest:people ratios and low percentage forest protected figures were the Middle East and the Far East (Table 3). On a global scale this indicates that these regions could be the worst off from the point of view of pressure on the remaining forests and therefore most in need of emphasis on forest management. The next most threatened region was Continental South and South East Asia, with a low forest:people ratio and a medium percentage of forest under protection. The Caribbean was the region of next most concern, with a low forest:people ratio but with a high percentage of the forest protected (relatively speaking: 15%). Although pressures may be high due to the relatively large number of people per unit of forest, the high forest protection percentage indicates that this region has recognised its forests are under much pressure and has taken steps to conserve them. However the fact that there is a relatively high percentage of forest under legal protection in the Caribbean does not mean that it is safe from deleterious illegal activities. In this region an investigation of the on-the-ground state of the protected forests in relation to their legal status would be interesting.
At the other end of the scale are the forests of Russia where the forest:people ratio was high but the percentage of forest under protection was low. The danger is in this case to assume that because the ratio is low and the pressure on forests is not high, therefore there is not such an urgent need for protection efforts as there would be for example in Continental South and South East Asia. The regional analysis showed that some forest types and variants were rare and unprotected in Russia, and should be examined for conservation needs without delay. The vast areas of boreal forest are of conservation concern particularly because of the very large area of forest that is required to support viable populations of the large carnivores found there.
The three other regions with high forest:population ratios, Australasia, North America and South America, had a medium percentage of their forests protected. These regions, particularly North and South America, have vast areas of forest that are essential for the survival of populations of the endangered large mammals that live there, and it is important that these tracts remain very large. Smaller areas of unique forest types were also highlighted for conservation activities, such as the 350 km² of sclerophyllous dry forest in the warm temperate desert zone of North America.
In an attempt to give an impression of how the forest:people scenario is going to change over the next few years, a forecast was made to 2025 of the forest area and population in each region (see Methods). According to these projections, in most regions the ratios will decrease, but in Russia and Europe there will be a slight increase (Fig 6). In Europe at least, this is attributable to the expansion of forestry plantations into currently unforested lands, as well as the low population growth rate. The overall world ratio will change, leaving 0.46ha per person as against the 0.7ha in 1996. This is a drop of 34%. Russia will replace Australasia in having the highest ratio. At the opposite end of the scale are the regions which will experience a dramatic fall in their forest:population ratios, for example, Continental South and South East Asia, Insular South East Asia and Africa, in which the ratios will be almost halved. Continental South and South East Asia will share the lowest ratio in the world with the Middle East (0.6).
The fact that Insular South East Asia had the highest percentage forest protection figure of all the regions in this study (17%), and yet it appeared in the prediction for 2025 to have experienced a rapid change in the forest:population ratio, means that either the population is going to grow at an extremely rapid rate or that the legally designated protected areas do not mean forest protection on the ground. South and Central America will also experience a large drop in the forest:people ratio. Australasia will experience the largest absolute drop in the ratio figure, from 63.2 to 47.5.
In order to change the direction of the forest:people ratio progress over the next 30 years, action must be taken to (a) halt population increase and (b) halt forest destruction. As the extrapolations above are estimates, the accuracy of the ratio predictions depends on the accuracy of the model for population and forest change. The population figures were obtained from the United Nations sources as well as some individual research institutes (see Methods), which took into account the effects of forecasted migrations, economic factors and behavioural changes in populations leading to birth rate decreases. The forecasts for the population change are therefore more likely to be accurate than the forest change estimate, which was merely a calculation using the rate of forest change for each of the regions of the world given in by FAO (1995), and does not take into account the possible changes in the rate of change over the period.
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