Deforestation

Livestock production is one of the main land uses that expand into cleared forest land. Whilst not necessarily being the original cause of the deforestation - which may have been cleared for timber for example - livestock production is nevertheless closely associated with forest clearance. Land used for extensive grazing in the the Amazon basin has increased continuously over the past decades and most of this increase has been at the expense of forests. Whilst this land is largely used for cattle grazing, smallstock - particularly goats - are often cited as a cause of a reduction in woodland. For example, goats are known for their destruction of woody plants, but they become the preferred animal when grazing is too poor for cattle or for sheep.

Pressure State Response References and Further Reading

The mismanagement of forest lands and forest resources over centuries, mainly due to the need to provide land on which to grow food, has led to a situation where the forest is now in rapid retreat.  Pressures for deforestation arise from a combination of factors, largely rooted in causes of an economic  nature, and include:

• The search for new land for human habitation, including transmigration programmes
• New land for growing crops
• New land for livestock production
• Clearance of forests for timber extraction
• Clearance of forests for other wood products, including pulp used in paper manufacture
• Increased human population pressure
• The demand for fuelwood (including charcoal production)
• Forest fires

The situation is further aggravated by slash and burn cultivation, and partly as a result of this practice, fire is used extensively in the tropics for the clearance of forests. The objectives of this burning are site clearing for shifting cultivation, bush and weed control, hunting, and grazing livestock. Burning is a simple and effective method of land clearing but it has serious consequences for the ecosystem which is being burnt and for its surroundings.

State

Indicators of state can be largely reduced to the relatively simple ones concerned with the area of forest and its rate of loss. However, whilst these may be conceptually simple, obtaining accurate statistics on rates of forest loss is problematic. The best estimates are probably those derived from the use of time series of satellite imagery. However, these area-based indicators do not give any indication of the actual causes of deforestation in individual cases. These causative factors are diverse but must be considered in any responses to tackle to problem of loss of forest area.

The most serious form of deforestation is currently recognized to be that which has an impact on previously untouched natural forests (e.g. "old-growth" forests in North America, Tropical Forests such as those found in the Amazon Basin, and forest clearance in Indonesia). Deforestation in these areas may attract considerable media coverage.

A less obvious and less well covered form of deforestation concerns the gradual removal of woodland and small forest patches in semi-arid, sub-humid and humid areas where human settlement is an important part of the landscape. In addition to the removal of woodland and forest to clear land for agriculture, major causes of this deforestation are the lack of access to alternative resources, e.g. resulting in the widespread use of wood for cooking and other power/heating requirements (fuelwood), or in an excessive and unsustainable use of woody browse for feeding livestock (tree fodder).

Responses to deforestation can be considered under several categories:

• Attempts to halt deforestation through protective legislation, e.g. creation of Forest Reserves, with either complete protection or controlled and limited forms of forest exploitation. However, to to be successful, these measures need to take into consideration the causative factors that are responsible for the deforestation in the first place.
  
• Rehabilitation of degraded or cleared forest through replanting. This can be achieved through policy reforms aimed at improved land management. Forest policy reform, for instance, strengthening land tenure or lengthening commercial forest concessions to promote replanting, is an obvious priority in many cases.
  
• Planting of new forest areas to partially compensate for deforestation in other areas. This course of action as well as the previous (rehabilitation/replanting) will, however, be largely limited to the creation of planted forests that are normally composed of a single or small number of species. As such they can not be expected to in any way compensate for the removal of the very high levels of biodiversity found in the majority of natural forests in both tropical and temperate areas.
  
• Use of forests as a Carbon Sink for Carbon Sequestration.
  
• Measures to provide alternatives to the products obtained through deforestation. For this approach to succeed there needs to be an understanding of the social, environmental and economic factors involved in creating the pressure for deforestation, and of the ways in which these pressures are changing.

Therefore, the most important questions to answer include:

What are the real reasons for loss of forest cover?		Conduct social, environmental and economic studies to determine the real causative factors involved in deforestation.
What are the important resources and environmental functions lost as a result of forest clearance? Which institutions and social groups are involved?		Create or strengthen institutions with a mandate for monitoring these factors.
How can one develop an effective communication between all the different players?		Develop mechanisms for communication within and between government departments and between these and NGOs to facilitate the translation of information from these surveys/studies into policy actions.