There are immense opportunities for the forestry sector to contribute to post-pandemic recovery, as governments across the Asia Pacific region are pledging hundreds of millions dollars on green initiatives. Source: Timberbiz
“In Asia and the Pacific, regreening action, in particular through forest and landscape restoration, is likely to be a key pillar in forestry contributions to green recovery,” said Dr Oyunsanaa Byambasuren, Director General of Forestry at the Mongolian Ministry of Environment and Tourism, after chairing four days of online discussions among the Asia-Pacific Forestry Commission’s (APFC) 34 member countries.
The meeting, the 29th session of the APFC, was hosted by the Government of Mongolia under the theme ‘Forests and green recovery in Asia-Pacific’.
Experts and policy makers at APFC agreed that forest-based solutions, including halting deforestation, restoring degraded lands and promoting green value chains can be the solution to urgent problems for the Asia-Pacific and the wider world, such as climate change, biodiversity loss and food insecurity.
They stressed that this will require robust political will, improved governance processes and an appropriate mix of financial incentives, including public financing, tax breaks, public-private partnerships, and procurement contracts supporting eco-tourism and other green products and services.
A number of countries in the region have already begun addressing COVID-related unemployment by pledging to create new jobs in afforestation, reforestation and agroforestry.
For example, in 2020, India announced funding of US$790 million to generate employment through afforestation and forest restoration activities in urban, semi-urban and rural areas, while in New Zealand the government has earmarked US$750 million in conservation spending aimed at creating 11,000 jobs in the environmental sector.
The COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdowns dramatically affected many forestry operations in the region, including afforestation and reforestation, harvesting and wood processing and eco-tourism. However, through the pandemic, forests were also a key safety net for rural communities, offering fuel, food and raw materials.
The impact of the pandemic was not entirely negative, as in some countries COVID-19-related lockdowns gave forests and wildlife a brief degree of respite from human exploitation, the APFC heard.
Nevertheless, upsurges in illegal forest activities, such as logging and wildlife poaching, were reported in a number of countries, including Nepal, Cambodia and Myanmar.
Asia and the Pacific has 751 million hectares of forests, accounting for 18.5% of global forest cover.
According to FAO’s Global Forest Resources Assessment, the forest area in the region increased by 31.3 million hectares over the period 1990-2020, largely due to a growth in planted forests. But though offset by areas of forest expansion, Asia-Pacific still loses 2.2 million hectares of forest a year to deforestation.
Created in 1949, the Asia-Pacific Forestry Commission is one of the six regional forestry commissions established by FAO to provide a policy and technical forum for countries to discuss and address forest issues on a regional basis.
The next session of APFC is expected to take place in 2023.
