To mark International Day of Forests, we brought together three experts in the field to suggest their own thoughts on what lies ahead for forests. Below they offer their hopes, and fears, for these vital ecosystems in the years to come.
Roger Leakey - Vice-chairman of the International Tree Foundation
Author of Living with the Trees of Life
Agriculture has been one of the forces behind tropical deforestation. It has left local people without a traditional source of food – wild fruits and nuts and leaves from indigenous trees. Living with the Trees of Life – Towards the Transformation of Tropical Agriculture describes how these species are now being brought into tropical agriculture in ways that promote food and nutritional security, alleviate poverty through income generation and new cottage industries engaged in product processing and value-adding, rehabilitate degraded farmland and mitigating climate change – killing four or five birds with one stone. The upshot of this is expected to be the resolution of the big environmental, social and economic issues prevalent in the tropics and currently blighting our world. In addition, because 38% of farmland is degraded, restoring farmland to health and productivity could make deforestation and the loss of its wildlife a thing of the past. If this sounds good, we need to act now to promote this role of trees in the sustainable intensification of modern agriculture.
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Peter Savill - Chairman of the Future Trees Trust
Author of The Silviculture of Trees Used in British Forestry
The value of forests globally is recognized by politicians and others today more strongly than any time in history, yet we still face serious problems of deforestation and other issues that will influence the extent and quality of forests over the next 300 years. They include greenhouse gas emissions and how these will affect forests through climate change, including increased climatic variability. In 1700 the world’s population was about 0.7 billion, today it is 7 billion and by 2050 it will be 9 billion and will eventually stabilise at about 10 billion. Most of the increase will be in the tropics. This will result in huge pressures for deforestation to make way for more food production. Demands for access to vital resources, including water, energy and good living space will increase. These challenges will require all the skills that politicians, foresters, farmers and other land managers can bring to bear to maintain forest cover.
F. Ross Wylie - Entomologist for Queensland Government
Author of Insect Pests in Tropical Forestry
In forestry circles, forest health specialists are often viewed as ‘prophets of doom’ and peripheral to the main game. I would hate to step out of character entirely with the prophesy bit so I predict that within the next decade or so we will be up to our armpits in forest invasive species and almost totally at a loss as to how to deal with them. Already, plantation forestry worldwide is struggling with new pests such as the blue gum chalcid Leptocybe invasa and the winter bronzing bug Thaumastocoris peregrinus which are sweeping the globe in much the same way as the leucaena psyllid Heteropsylla cubana did in the 1980s and 1990s with devastating effect. Some of the reasons for the spike in invasives are the increasing volume of world trade, rapidity of transport and associated strain on resources to inspect. There is also, I feel, a measure of denial. Traditional forestry has relied on silviculture, nutrition and genetics to get them out of trouble but the pace of new introductions has picked up and significant investment is required in forest health solutions to prevent or manage these problems as an integrated package. I see a glimmer of awakening to this situation and hope we can act before we ‘bleed’ too many forest health specialists and lose our capacity to respond.
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