European Union faces calls to delay commodity import rules aimed at protecting forests
European Union faces calls to delay commodity import rules aimed at protecting forests
Dispatches from the redwood rebellion Yoder, Jeremy B
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
06/2022, Letnik:
376, Številka:
6600
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Tourism fails to compensate for lost timber jobs in protected forests, leading some to theft
The Congo Basin represents 70 percent of the African continent's forest cover and constitutes a large portion of Africa's biodiversity. The objective of the two-year exercise was to analyze and get a ...better grasp of the deforestation dynamics in the Basin. The primary goal of the exercise was to give stakeholders (and particularly policy makers) a thorough understanding of how economic activities (agriculture, transport, mining, energy, and logging) could impact the region's forest cover through an in-depth analysis of the connections between economic developments and forest loss. Historically, the Congo Basin forest has been under comparatively little pressure, but there are signs that this situation is likely to change as pressure on the forest and other ecosystems increases. Until very recently, low population density, unrest and war, and low levels of development hampered conversion of forests into other land uses; however, satellite-based monitoring data now show that the annual rates of gross deforestation in the Basin have doubled since 1990. There is indeed some evidence that the Basin forests may be at a turning point of heading to higher deforestation and forest degradation rates. The forest ecosystems have not yet suffered the damage observed in other tropical regions (Amazonia, Southeast Asia) and are quite well preserved. The low deforestation rates mainly result from a combination of such factors as poor infrastructure, low population densities, and political instability that have led to the so-called passive protection. However, signs that the Congo Basin forests could be under increasing pressure from a variety of forces-both internal and external range from mineral extraction, road development, agribusiness, and biofuels to agriculture expansion for subsistence and population growth. All of these factors could drastically amplify the pressure on natural forests in the coming decades and trigger the transition from the 'high forest/low deforestation' profile into a more intense pace of deforestation.
Many global environmental agendas, including halting biodiversity loss, reversing land degradation, and limiting climate change, depend upon retaining forests with high ecological integrity, yet the ...scale and degree of forest modification remain poorly quantified and mapped. By integrating data on observed and inferred human pressures and an index of lost connectivity, we generate a globally consistent, continuous index of forest condition as determined by the degree of anthropogenic modification. Globally, only 17.4 million km
of forest (40.5%) has high landscape-level integrity (mostly found in Canada, Russia, the Amazon, Central Africa, and New Guinea) and only 27% of this area is found in nationally designated protected areas. Of the forest inside protected areas, only 56% has high landscape-level integrity. Ambitious policies that prioritize the retention of forest integrity, especially in the most intact areas, are now urgently needed alongside current efforts aimed at halting deforestation and restoring the integrity of forests globally.
A comprehensive quantification of global forest fragmentation is urgently required to guide forest protection, restoration and reforestation policies. Previous efforts focused on the static ...distribution patterns of forest remnants, potentially neglecting dynamic changes in forest landscapes. Here, we map global distribution of forest fragments and their temporal changes between 2000 and 2020. We find that forest landscapes in the tropics were relatively intact, yet these areas experienced the most severe fragmentation over the past two decades. In contrast, 75.1% of the world's forests experienced a decrease in fragmentation, and forest fragmentation in most fragmented temperate and subtropical regions, mainly in northern Eurasia and South China, declined between 2000 and 2020. We also identify eight modes of fragmentation that indicate different recovery or degradation states. Our findings underscore the need to curb deforestation and increase connectivity among forest fragments, especially in tropical areas.
The global impact of EU forest protection policies Cerullo, Gianluca; Barlow, Jos; Betts, Matthew ...
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
08/2023, Letnik:
381, Številka:
6659
Journal Article
Abstract
Using engineered wood for construction has been discussed for climate change mitigation. It remains unclear where and in which way the additional demand for wooden construction material ...shall be fulfilled. Here we assess the global and regional impacts of increased demand for engineered wood on land use and associated CO
2
emissions until 2100 using an open-source land system model. We show that if 90% of the new urban population would be housed in newly built urban mid-rise buildings with wooden constructions, 106 Gt of additional CO
2
could be saved by 2100. Forest plantations would need to expand by up to 149 Mha by 2100 and harvests from unprotected natural forests would increase. Our results indicate that expansion of timber plantations for wooden buildings is possible without major repercussions on agricultural production. Strong governance and careful planning are required to ensure a sustainable transition to timber cities even if frontier forests and biodiversity hotspots are protected.
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