Global Forest Resources Assessments
The Chapter present evolution of FAO Global Forest Resources Assessments started in 1945 to provide globally consistent comprehensive information on forests of the world on a periodic basis. The discussion is divided into three parts viz. early assessment
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Global Forest Resources Assessments
19.1 The Rising Importance of Global Forests Few themes have been a source of continuing global interest, concern, and controversy as forests and deforestation rate. During the early periods, the dominant concern was about the capacity of forests to meet the growing international demand of timber. The first Global Forest Resources Assessment, 1948, began with the words: ‘‘The whole world is suffering from shortage of wood’’. The Stockholm Conference, 1972, recognized forests as the largest, most complex, and self-perpetuating of all ecosystems; acknowledged their multiple roles as provider of environmental services and producer of economic benefits to humans; and expressed ‘‘alarm’’ at the large-scale ongoing deforestation (paragraph 51). UNCED 1992 spent significant time in discussing the draft of a ‘‘Forest Convention’’ on the lines of Climate Change and Biological Diversity, but could reach an agreement on Forestry Principles. Only in 2000, an ‘‘international arrangement on forests’’ has been concluded and given the form of an intergovernmental body: the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) located at the UN HQ in New York. The following section presents the evolution of objective as well as the method for conducting global forest assessment since 1945 and lessons from the past successes and failures. The review is divided into three parts, viz., early assessments, 1948–1974; recent assessments, 1980–2010; and future scenario.
19.2 The Early Assessments: 1948–1968 The early assessments were based on questionnaires and included inquiries on forest resources (area and volume), annual growth, annual drain, and forest products. Four reports were published at 5-yearly intervals for the reference years 1948, 1953, 1958, and 1963. In WFI 1968 the questionnaire approach met with K. D. Singh, Capacity Building for the Planning, Assessment, and Systematic Observations of Forests, Environmental Science and Engineering, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-32292-1_19, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013
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Global Forest Resources Assessments
great difficulties in developing countries and was abandoned. The negative experience with questionnaires is according to expectations. If one bears in mind that till 1970 not a single tropical country had carried out a nationwide inventory, replying to questionnaires in a reliable manner, must have been a nightmare, if not an impossible task to most countries. ‘‘Official statistics’’ were provided, which reflected the nominal rather than actual condition of forest resources. Such numbers aggregated to regional and global levels produced statistics of unknown reliability and meaning. Reidar Persson, who had worked at the FAO HQ for WFI 1968 as a Forestry Officer, continued to develop a better method as his doctoral thesis at the Royal College of Forestry in Sweden, in cooperation with FAO. In 1974, he made a ‘‘centralized assessment’’ through studies financed by the Royal College of Forestry, Sweden, and produced reports on Forests of the Wor
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