13 Million Hectares of Forest Gone / Year
Some 13 million hectares of forests are destroyed around the world each year, an area the size of Greece, although the net loss of trees has finally slowed thanks mainly to new plantations, the United Nations said on Monday.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said its Global Forest Resources Assessment was the most exhaustive such survey undertaken, covering 229 countries and territories.
Taking into account plantations, landscape restoration and the natural expansion of some forests, the FAO said the net loss of forest area between 2000-2005 was some 7.3 million hectares a year against 8.9 million hectares in the 1990-2000 period.
FAO officials hailed the improvement in the net loss figure, saying China in particular had embarked on a major tree-growing program to provide timber for its construction boom and to tackle the process of deforestation.
Source: CNN.
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