The report calls on governments in the key 15 countries to draft action plans detailing how they propose to conserve their remaining closed forests. The extent of protected areas also needs to be sharply increased, and backed by tougher policing of such sites including crackdowns on smuggling and poaching of trees and wildlife, says the report. Importantly, the survey also reveals that the pressure from people and population growth on most of these remaining closed forests, such as those in Bolivia and Peru, is low. Others, such as the remaining closed forests in India and China, are under more pressure from human activity and may require a bigger effort to conserve and protect, the report concludes. The findings have come from scientists with UNEP working with other researchers including ones from the United States Geological Survey and NASA, the United States space agency.
Forests are vital for the well being of the planet.
They provide a variety of socio-economic and ecological goods and services. These include watershed management, with forests regulating the quantity and quality of rainwater discharging into rivers. They also help counter soil erosion and the spread of deserts. They play a vital role in reducing the impacts of climate change by soaking up carbon from the air. But despite their important role and numerous international conferences, conventions and agreements including the Forestry Principles, drawn up during the Earth Summit in 1992, and the Convention on Biological Diversity, forests around the globe remain under increasing threat.