UN / DEFORESTATION

A UN report shows that the rate of deforestation around the world has slowed over the last ten years, but each year an area roughly the size of Costa Rica is still destroyed. FILE

• Categories: News & Features / News Stories / Unifeed
• Video Length: 00:01:08
• Production Date: 25 March 2010
• Asset Language: Original
• Corporate Name: UNITED NATIONS ENVIRONMENT PROGRAMME - UNEP; WORLD BANK
• Subject Topical: LAND; PLANTS; SOIL RESOURCES; AGRICULTURE; FORESTRY; FISHING; AGRICULTURE; ENGINEERING; EDUCATION; FORESTRY
• Geographic Subject: UNITED NATIONS STABILIZATION MISSION IN HAITI - MINUSTAH
• MAMS Id: U100325b

Description

STORY: UN / DEFORESTATION
TRT: 1:08
SOURCE: MINUSTAH/ UNEP/ WORLD BANK
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: NATS

DATELINE: FILE

Shotlist

FILE – 1 JULY 2009, KENSKOFF, HAITI

1. Wide shot, man cutting a tree
2. Various shots, cut tree trunks
3. Wide shot, denuded hills with flowers in foreground

FILE – MARCH 2009, MAU FOREST

4. Various shots, aerials of Mau Forest complex
5. Various shot, aerials dry land

FILE- NOVEMBER 2007, ANHUI PROVINCE, CHINA

6. Pan right, forest
7. Various shots, trees, forests
8. Close-up, chestnuts in tree
9. Wide shot, valley, forest
10. Med shot, seeding field at Huangshan Forestry Institute
11. Close-up, seedling at Huangshan Forestry Institute
12. Wide shot, seeding field at Huangshan Forestry Institute
13. Med shot, chestnut tree
14. Various shots, workers picking chestnuts from trees
15. Wide shot, workers in tree nursery

Storyline

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) today released its most comprehensive forest review to date assessing global forest resources in 233 countries and areas.

According to the report, while world deforestation has decreased over the past ten years, this destructive phenomenon continues at an alarmingly high rate in many countries.

The world's total forest area is just over four billion hectares or 31 percent of the Earth’s total land area. The study reports that around 13 million hectares of forests were converted to other uses or lost through natural causes each year between 2000 and 2010 as compared to around 16 million hectares per year during the 1990s. The net annual loss of forests in 2000-2010 is equivalent to an area about the size of Costa Rica.

Ambitious tree planting programmes in countries such as China, India, the United States and Viet Nam – combined with natural expansion of forests in some regions – have added more than 7 million hectares of new forests annually.
In addition, Brazil and Indonesia, which had the highest loss of forests in the 1990s, have significantly reduced their deforestation rates.

More than 900 specialists from 178 countries were involved in the Global Forest Resources Assessment 2010. The full report of this Assessment will be released in October 2010.

A remote-sensing survey of forests, led by FAO, sampling some 13,500 sites over a period of 15 years, will provide even more accurate data on global and regional rates of deforestation by the end of 2011.