Joint FAO-UNEP Press Briefing on the “State of World’s Forests Report 2020

It's 3:00, so we will get started with this press conference.

Good afternoon everyone, and happy International Day for Biological Diversity, which we celebrate today, 22nd of May.

And it is on this occasion that the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations and the United Nations Environment Programme, UNEP, are holding this joint press briefing to talk to you about the State of the World's Forest Reports 2020, which has just come out this morning.

With us.

We have Mette Wilkie, who is the Director of Forestry Policy and Resources Division at the Forestry Department of the FAO welcome and also Neville Ashe, the Director of the UN Environment Programme, World Conservation Monitoring Centre.

Both are with us.

I'll ask them to deliver a few opening remarks and then as usual, we will take some questions from from the media.

So should we start with Miss Mehta?

Mehta Wilkie?

Sure.

Good afternoon.

Good.

Afternoon.

Let me share my screen with you.

We have a presentation for you.

So as you can see, Neville and I have will be here with you this afternoon to talk you through some of the key findings of this State of the World's Forest 2020.

This is a report that the FAO publishes every two years.

We look at what's happening in the world's forest this year because it marks the end of the United Nations Decade on Biodiversity.

This edition celebrates the diversity and the benefits of forest biodiversity and takes stock of progress towards relevant global goals and targets.

It also presents the case for why the conservation and sustainable use of forest must be a key pillar of the new biodiversity framework that's currently under development.

This time, for the first time, we teamed up with the UN Environment Programme and it's World Conservation Monitoring Centre to help collate existing information and to undertake some new analysis.

And let me just say from the start that it's been a great collaborative effort.

The State of the World's Forest 2020 builds on existing information and it draws, among others, on the results of FA OS Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020, or FRA 2020 as we call it.

The key findings of this assessment were released just two weeks ago, so all brand new.

We also commissioned 3 special studies for this edition to provide new insights and 10 case studies to describe examples of local solutions that have resulted in positive outcomes for both people and the planet.

The first of those three studies looked at this spatial pattern of forests and provided new data on forest intactness and fragmentation.

So the map here shows the most intact forests by a global ecological zone or large forest types such as tropical rainforests as you can see in red, and boreal coniferous forests that's shown in dark blue in this map.

The second study looked at links between forest and poverty and demonstrated how the overlay of the forest antagonist map with poverty data might help identify priority intervention areas for national strategies that look to see if they can combine positive development and conservation outcomes.

And the third study provided more details on the representativeness of protected areas and on changes in protected area status of forest over time.

You will hear more about this study from my Co presenter in a short while, but let's start at the beginning.

Forests cover some 31% of the total land area or just over 4 billion hectares.

And as you can see, and as you know, they're found from the far north to the far South, and they are incredibly diverse.

This of course, makes it difficult to draw global conclusions, but we have 5 key messages that we'd like to convey.

And I'd hand over to Neville for the first one.

Neville, if he's on mute, that would be great.

Neville, Ash, are you with us?

He was.

He was there initially.

Maybe he's been kicked off.

Thank you.

No, I've been unmuted now.

I wasn't able to do that myself.

Thank you so much, Matt and and happy International Biodiversity Day to everyone.

Let me start by saying again, the collaboration here with FAO on this work has been a tremendous collaboration and we look forward to much more like this as we go forwards.

So yes, despite the fact that forests cover less than 1/3 of the global land area, forests are home to most of Earth's terrestrial biodiversity.

There are more than 60,000 different tree species, 60% of all vascular plants.

So these are the large plants we see around us all the time, not the mosses, but most other plants we see are found in tropical forests.

4/5 of all amphibian species, 3/4 of all bird species, and almost 70% of all mammal species are found in forests.

And that's not to say anything of the more than 1,000,000.

This is an underestimate most likely, of insects and soil microbes around the world in forests.

And we're not just talking about terrestrial land, living plants and animals, because by the side of rivers, forests provide shade and nutrients for freshwater plants and animals.

Along tropical coastlines, mangroves provide breeding grounds and nurseries for fish, shellfish, and trapped sediments that might otherwise smother coral reefs.

So the importance of forest is found in both terrestrial and aquatic systems.

And this means that the conservation of the world's biodiversity is utterly dependent on the way in which we interact with and use the world's forests.

And that's our first message.

The second message is that all people depend upon forests and their biodiversity, some more than others.

Forests provide the air that we breathe, the water that we drink and much of the food that we eat, and they help mitigate climate change.

Did you know, for example, that 75% of the accessible freshwater comes from forested watersheds?

Or that 87 of the 115 leading food crops, together representing 35% of global food production, benefit from pollination by animals, many of which live in forests.

Forests also provide essential products, livelihoods and well-being.

They provide more than 86 million green jobs, 880 million people collect fuel wood or produce charcoal, and 2.4 billion people use fuel wood for cooking.

That's 1/3 of the global population.

More than a billion people depend to some extent on wild foods, meat, berries, mushrooms and fish.

And that's not just in developing countries.

There are just as many people in Europe, for example, that are depending partly on forest products, and many of the more than 28,000 plants known to have medicinal use come from forest.

And I think that all of us have discovered during the COVID-19 pandemic that a walk in the park or in a forest has a positive impact on both the physical and mental health and well-being.

The third message is that despite all of these benefits and despite some progress, deforestation and forest degradation continue at alarming rates.

The Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020 tells us that 10 million hectares of forests are converted to other uses each year.

It's down from 16,000,000 hectares per year in the 1990s, but it's still a big number.

And although we also have some gain in forests through natural expansion or by the planting or or seeding of trees, the forests we lose and those we gain are very different.

Most of the forests we gain are found in the temperate and boreal zones, while most of the forests we lose are located in the tropics and subtropics.

The main driver of deforestation continues to be the expansion of agriculture, with large scale commercial agriculture accounting for some 40% and small scale local subsistence agriculture for an additional 33.

So our 4th message is this, that the solutions that balance conservation and the sustainable use of forests are critical.

They are available and they are possible.

So actions to combat deforestation and illegal logging have gathered pace, thanks in particular to the inclusion of forests in the climate change agenda and the results based payments for reduction of emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries.

And FAO and UNAP are working together with UNDP and partners at the national level to help make this happen.

Countries have already pledged to restore more than 170 million hectares of degraded landscapes and forests by 20-30, which is a great start.

But there were two billion hectares of degraded land globally, so more work needs to be done.

And then one of the global biodiversity targets on protected areas has been met for forests for coverage at least.

So we have more now than the anticipated 17% of protected area coverage of forests around the world.

Allow me to spend a little bit more time on this last point on protection of forests.

So colleagues at UNAP WCMC have taken a deeper look at trends in protected areas over time.

And as you can see from this graphic, there has been a very significant increase over the last 30 years or so, most of it in broadleaf Evergreen forests such as those found in the tropics.

There are 20 global ecological zones around the world that contain some tree cover, and in three of these in tropical rainforests, in subtropical dry forest and in temperate oceanic forest.

More than 30% of all the tree cover is now found in protected areas.

The State of the World's Forest Report being launched today contains numerous examples and 10 case studies which describe local solutions that combine conservation and sustainable use of forests and their biodiversity.

They range from large scale dryland restoration actions in Africa, community concessions in Guatemala, forest and freshwater conservation in North America, and panda friendly use of medicinal plants in China.

I encourage you all to delve into these examples of effective solutions for forest conservation.

We know that negative trends in biodiversity loss undermine progress towards the Sustainable Development Goal, so our last and most important message is this.

We must take bold action to reverse the loss of forest and the biodiversity for the benefit of people and the planet.

We must protect, manage and restore our forests and their biodiversity.

To protect, we need to transform our food systems to halt deforestation.

To manage, we need to ensure positive outcomes for both biodiversity and people.

This requires a very careful balance between conservation and sustainable use.

And to restore, we need to repair the damage that's been done to the environment and to the livelihoods of people by scaling up restoration efforts.

Since forest restoration helps restore habitats and ecosystems, creates jobs, and is an effective nature based solutions to climate change.

These were the five key messages that we have in the State of the World's Forest 2020.

You can find the full report and a lot of other material on these websites that are shown here.

We'd be happy to take any questions that you might have.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you to both Meti Wilkie and Neville Ashe for this very professional, very interesting presentation and some very important messages coming out of this year's State of the World's Forest report.

We will go to our correspondence to see if there are any questions.

And I see that we we have a first question from Jamiel.

Jamiel, if you would like to introduce yourself.

Hello.

Well, good to see you as well.

I'm a journalist from Brazil here in Geneva.

My question is about your numbers on deforestation.

You mentioned 10 million hectares lost.

If I read well your report, 2.5 out of the 10 million were in Latin America.

I would like to ask you specifically about Brazil.

What is what is the trend that you're seeing, especially with latest decisions by Bolsonaro's government to basically open up the forest for exploitation?

So that is the first question.

And the second question is also related to the forest in terms of Brazil, how, how do you see as a the agriculture you mentioned agriculture as a major driver, those numbers, 40 percent, 33%, are those more or less the same numbers for Brazil or that is just a global average?

Thank you.

Thank you, Jamil, who would like like to start off.

I can do that.

All right.

So on the deforestation rate that I presented here, that was the result from the global Forest resources assessment.

The key findings were launched just two weeks ago.

Those key findings only have the global data.

The data that we're receiving for that assessment are submitted by each of the countries and the dependent territories.

The ones that we have reported on in 2020 were obviously submitted to us in 2019.

So they do have a forecast for what it might be in 2019 and 2020, which we are basing the number on the individual country report with with start being launched in July.

So we are hoping that we will have all of the individual country report then.

I'm not going to share any information on specific countries before then because that's on their embargo I'm afraid.

But we can say though that the deforestation rate in Latin America has been reduced quite significantly.

We now see that when we talk about the net loss of forest, the continent of Africa has actually exceeded that of Latin America for the first time.

So there has been a very significant reduction in the rates of deforestation in Latin America as a whole.

The second one was on the agricultural drivers.

We again, we have the drivers at the global level.

Those with the numbers I gave you, we it varies very much between regions and between countries and even within countries in big numbers.

For Latin America it's primarily large scale conversion of agriculture, in Africa it's primarily small scale and in Asia it's a mix of the two.

We do have findings for the three regions and I'd be happy to to share as a side of that and the reference to the report that that was coming out from, but we don't have that by country.

Thank you.

Neville.

Ash, would you like to add anything on this?

Nothing specific to add to the question, but just maybe to put the numbers in context.

So the current net loss of forest of around 10 million hectares a year, it's about 100,000 square kilometres a year.

And and that's equivalent to the size of some countries.

So for example, South Korea, Iceland, almost beside the Guatemala, the average size of a Western European country.

So just we need to put the numbers in into scale in terms of something which is very meaningful and tangible to to people.

That's about the size of of current forest loss, which is still continuing.

And as Mehta said, it varies hugely around the world and these are the global figures.

OK, I see that Jamiel has his hand up again.

Maybe it's a follow up question.

So before we go to Peter, let's give the follow up question to Jamiel.

Thank you, Rael.

Yes, it's a follow up question.

I'm, I'm, I'm sorry to insist on, on the issue of Brazil, because it is very complicated to put out a number for the, let's say, for, for a reader in a place of the, of the Earth that actually means the entire globe without being more specific in terms of what happens in his own ecosystem.

Otherwise, it's, it's very complicated for as a story, it's all 10 million around the world.

Yes, but where, how?

And you know, So, Mike, I still insist on the question related to Brazil because it is very important what happens locally to the reader locally.

And my question if you cannot, since you cannot put out the numbers yet, are you satisfied with what the Brazilian government is doing at the Amazon?

This is Mehta again for the numbers.

You may also be able to just contact the, the government in Brazil and they can give you a copy of the report that they have supplied to FAO.

So they may well be willing to do so because those are the figures that that we are reporting on.

We, the reports that we are coming in from the countries vary depending on what kind of information that they have in Brazil.

As you know, they're quite good at having a monitoring system in place from space, plus some plots on the ground as well.

So the the information that we're getting from from Brazil is something that's sort of validated with our other information that we have.

So we consider it fairly good and fairly **** quality of what we're getting.

And Neville, would you like to add something on this?

Well, specifically on Brazil, of course, Brazil is hugely important as a forest nation in the world.

So Brazil and four other countries together make up around half of the world's forests, hugely important country for for forests globally.

So yes, the national context is of course most important, but the contribution that Brazil makes to the global picture also hugely important.

And certainly where we are seeing a number of changes in forests cover in Brazil and the biodiversity consequences of that.

So for example.

In coastal Brazil, we have seen a decline in in recent decades of the biodiversity intactness, for example, brought about by the loss of forest.

So there are some some local examples where we have seen some key changes.

But as Mehta said, the figures for this are coming out in due course.

So we'll have to be a little bit patient still.

Thank you.

Let's let's go to Peter Kenny.

Peter, if you could introduce yourself, my name is Peter Kenny.

I work for South African Media.

You spoke about 10 areas of biodiversity in the world, or at least the notions of of 10 areas, and I'm interested in the biodiversity of desertified areas, particularly pertaining to southern Africa.

I know you've said you can't speak about specific nations, but of course it probably includes mainly South Africa and Namibia.

Who would like to to go first?

Yeah.

In terms of the sort of intagness and the information that we have that we looked at the biodiversity importance of specific countries, we have that on the maps that you can see in the report.

We haven't collated that at the national level.

So we have focused on looking at what are the changes that are happening either globally or by these big forest types across the globe.

So these ecological zones, if you will.

So that's where we have information.

So I'm not able to sort of disaggregate that down to what's happening in, as we say, South Africa.

Clearly for the deforestation in in Africa, it's for the central and Southern Africa, it's below the Sahel.

Northern Africa actually has an increase in forest area in, in some countries in the more drier countries.

So we can see there's a difference and there's a difference there.

But unfortunately individual countries and you will have to wait for the the report certainly on the deforestation and the net loss that's coming out in July.

But you can get some information from the maps that are in the report.

Neville, would you like to add something before we go back to Kenny to Peter?

Well, as with Brazil, the, the importance is often at the local level of forest.

So one is the global picture where the global trends are being presented today.

At the national level, the picture is important too.

And then in many parts of the world, what's most important is the local forest situation, circumstance and condition for local communities.

So, and certainly that is true in in many parts of the world, as I mentioned before in relation to coastal Brazil, also in South Africa, southern Africa, but particularly in South Africa, we've also seen a loss of biodiversity intactness in recent years, a forest dependent species.

It's not unique to South Africa, Madagascar, other places as well.

So there is a little bit of resolution there in the report.

I appreciate people haven't had too many hours to read it yet, but one can find a bit more information on those details within the current report and more to come still.

Thank you.

I don't see any other hands raised we, but if anybody one would like to ask another question, please let us know, OK.

I don't see any other journalists wanting to take the floor.

So we will, we will end the press conference here.

And of course, our colleague from FAO, Adriano Jose TI Mosi remains available for if you have any other questions or wish to conduct interviews with our guests, you may reach him or the UNEP spokesperson as well.

And I'm sure they'll be happy to arrange that.

So thank you very much Nettie Wilkie and Neville Ash from FAO and UNET for being with us today and releasing some very interesting conclusions to this this report.

Again, happy International Day for Biological Diversity and I wish everyone a very nice weekend.

Thank you very much for having us.

Thank you.

Bye.

Bye for now.

Bye.