Asia must prepare for new challenges facing forestry, UN says

Oct 16, 2007, 13:04 GMT

Bangkok - The Asia-Pacific region is facing increasing demand from the world over for forest products and must look for ways to preserve its remaining woodlands, officials with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said Tuesday.

Over the past 15 years, the region has lost about 10 million hectares of forest cover, an area roughly half the size of Laos or equal in size to the US state of Pennsylvania, said Patrick Durst, a FAO senior forestry official.

Durst said the FAO hopes to address the most pressing issues concerning forestry in the region during a three-day conference that began Tuesday on how globalization is altering its forest landscape in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand.

Development of forestry bioenergy resources like palm oil have accelerated global demand at the same time that international borders have become less important.

'We are living in a borderless world and what happens in forests and forestry in one country is very much dependent on what happens in other countries,' FAO forestry boss Jan Heino said.

Concerns of how deforestation effects other regions of the world is another issue for the conference.

'How countries manage their forests is increasingly becoming a matter of international concern on account of the wide-ranging impacts that deforestation and forest degradation have on climate and water resources,' said Jagmohan Maini, a former UN official who specializes in forestry.