TORONTO, Sept 9 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Forest protection agencies in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Mozambique and Madagascar will step up joint efforts to combat the rapidly expanding trade in illegal timber under a new deal.
The Zanzibar Declaration on Illegal Trade in Timber and Other Forest Products, signed on Wednesday at a global gathering on forests in South Africa, aims to improve communication between customs authorities and collaboration among forest officials from the east and southeast African nations.
If properly managed, forests provide jobs for workers and homes for wildlife. They also act as a filter pulling planet-warming carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, so protecting them is crucial for the broader environment.
Across the region, the illegal timber trade is flourishing at an alarming pace, said Juma S. Mgoo, chief executive officer of Tanzania’s Forest Service. Criminal groups are benefiting from the environmental destruction.
“Forests continue to dwindle at unprecedented rates in our region,” Mgoo said in a statement.
“If we continue at the rate which we are going there will be nothing left for our children and their children to enjoy.”
Kenya loses around $10 million annually due to the illegal cross-border wood trade with Tanzania, while Tanzania loses more than $8 million, according to studies cited by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), a green group backing the new agreement.
Between 2000 and 2012, forest cover in Tanzania shrank by 2 million hectares (4.94 million acres) – an area the size of Wales in Britain – and by 2.2 million hectares in Mozambique, a WWF analysis showed.
JOHANNESBURG, Sept 7 (Reuters) – The world has lost forests the size of South Africa over the past 25 years, a decline of more than 3 percent, although the rate of forest loss has significantly slowed, a report by the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said on Monday.
A growing global population and increased demand for food and land are driving deforestation, although the FAO said the rate of global forest area change has slowed by more than 50 percent since 1990.
“The biggest forest area loss occurred in the tropics, particularly in South America and Africa, although the rate of loss in those areas has decreased substantially in the past five years,” FAO said.
It said the rate of loss had declined due to reduced forest conversion rates in some countries and increased forest area expansion in others.
“Countries have more knowledge of their forest resources than ever before and as a result we have a better picture of global forest change,” the FAO said.
The world has just under 4 billion hectares of forests in 2015 from 4.1 billion in 1990, FAO said.
Forests give protection against climate change, as trees absorb carbon dioxide. Deforestation has been blamed for worsening soil erosion, landslides and floods.
An estimated 1.2 billion people rely on forests for their livelihood, including about 60 million indigenous people who are almost entirely dependent on them, the International Union of Forest Research Organizations said in May.