Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, May 20 2005 (IPS) — Shashi Tharoor, the U.N. under-secretary-general for public information, admits that the United Nations has earned the dubious distinction of being one of the world’s most celebrated ”paper factories”, cranking out thousands of documents every year- perhaps most of them remaining unread.

On an average, the world body produces in excess of 700 million printed pages annually, according to U.N. estimates – a process that involves the destruction of hundreds of thousands of trees, which are converted into wood pulp and newsprint.

Still, says Tharoor, ”the amount of paper we use in a year to produce every single U.N. document, in all six official languages, is equivalent to what the New York Times consumes to print a single Sunday edition.”

Ironically, the very world body that continues to thrive on paper – despite its recent advances in e-mail and video conferencing – is holding a two-week meeting to consider the feasibility of formulating a legally binding convention to stop the wanton deforestation that continues to take place worldwide.

The United Nations Forum on Forests, which is scheduled to conclude its sessions on May 27, is a high-level body currently addressing some of the most critical issues related to forests.

Wangari Maathai, the 2004 Nobel peace laureate, told the forum that most of the national forests in her native Kenya have, over the last 50 years, been destroyed to make way for commercial plantations of the emerging timber and paper industries.

Maathai, who also is Kenya’s assistant minister for the environment and natural resources, said her country’s national forests also are being replaced by farmland.

”The forest had been heavily degraded, and the nearby river was almost non-existent,” she added.

Without trees, Maathai said, there would be no oxygen. Most people did not understand the way in which their daily lives related to trees and forests.

”Until one looked for a seed, planted it and nourished it, all other action was meaningless,” she said.

Maathai said that while there had been much talk over the years about forests in general, the fact was that very little was being done to protect and propagate them.

”We could spend the rest of our lives talking, but the more we talk, the more we are losing,” she added.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he agreed that deforestation and forest degradation ”continue at an alarming rate” despite ”substantial progress” in the formulation and implementation of national forest policies.

In a report to the forum, Annan said the rate of deforestation in the 1990s was estimated at 14.6 million hectares per year.

But since 5.2 million hectares were gained through ”afforestation” – establishing a forest on previously unforested land – and natural expansion of forests, the rate of net deforestation was really about 9.4 million hectares per year, he added.

Annan’s study said that close to 1.6 billion people now depend to varying degrees on forests for their livelihoods. And forests provide subsistence and income to about 350 million people who live within or near forests, while forest industries provide employment to nearly 100 million people.

”The alarming rate of deforestation continues to warrant international attention, and there is a need to renew the pledge to combat deforestation and restore forest functions (such as production, protection and conservation) at the landscape level, by rehabilitating degraded lands with, inter alia, forest plantations, and to improve the livelihoods of poor people living in and around forests worldwide as a priority,” the study added.

Barrera Garavito of Guatemala urged a legally binding agreement on forests based on a convention open to all states ”which would yet maintain its vocation of respecting the policies of all countries.”

Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, chair of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, told delegates that issues relating to forests and indigenous peoples were complex and cross-cutting.

”It had been encouraging to see emerging U.N. standards on forests affirming secure land rights for indigenous peoples, their full participation in forest policy-making, recognition of traditional forest-related knowledge, and promotion of community-based forest management,” Corpuz said.

She strongly supported a rights-based approach to forest policy and implementation, which she said would empower indigenous peoples and local communities.

David Kaimowitz, director-general of the Centre for International Forestry Research in Indonesia, pointed out that Asia had more than 60 percent of the world’s plantations, mostly in China, India, and Japan, as well as in Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia.

He said that many of the poorest families in Asia depended heavily on forests for their cash, energy, medicinal plants, fodder, and for many other basic needs.

The most extreme poverty in Asia was concentrated in forested and arid areas, and there had been little improvement there.

In China, 80 percent of the poorest counties lived in forests and in Vietnam, there was a high correlation between forests and poverty.

Manuel Rodriguez-Becerra of Colombia, chair of the forest forum, told reporters that he heard many expressions of dissatisfaction at the lack of implementation of policies decided at the global level.

”Meaningful implementation of the decisions taken globally had been missing, as evidenced by the fact that deforestation and degradation of forests was increasing,” he said.