Lahore - A study commissioned by the Scientific Committee of WWF Pakistan has revealed that a startling area of forest land has been transferred over for non-forest uses since 1947. This is most rampant in Sindh and Punjab. At the same time, the deforestation rate in Pakistan is the highest in Asia; about -2.1 percent, as studied by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation and only 2.5 percent of the country’s total area is forest cover.
There is a massive re-rating of native forest going on, even as world resolve to tackle climate change crumbles. Deforestation accounts for roughly 20 per cent of our greenhouse problem, on the ''sink'' side of the ledger (because it's not just about how much gas we pump up into the atmosphere - by clearing trees we damage the planet's ability to suck it back down).
Wood products from British Columbia traditionally have moved south to the United States by way of rail or truck, and to a lesser degree, by sea.
Now with the demand for British Columbia’s wood soaring in China, and drastically weakening in the U.S., lumber is hitting a transportation bottleneck at B.C.’s ports.
$1.2 million in federal-provincial funding for the First Nations Forest Sector Technical Support Program will help First Nations with economic development in the forest and wood products industries, announced Minister of State (Sport) Gary Lunn and Minister of Forests, Mines and Lands Pat Bell.
West Africa’s Guinean Rainforest once stretched unbroken from Guniea to Cameroon. Today, however, just 18% of the forest remains, in part due to the rapid expansion of slash-and-burn agriculture by small farmers growing cocoa, the source of chocolate. Enabling chocolate farmers to buy better seeds and more fertilizer — and boost production without felling more trees – may be one the best and cheapest ways to save the remaining forest, argues a new analysis. But the “fertilizers for forests” strategy faces major hurdles.
