Notes
4.2 The Extent of Planted Forests
This section brings together the results of the Global Planted Forest Thematic Study (FAO, 2006c) and the FRA 2005 (FAO, 2006a) data to estimate the total area of planted forests worldwide. The planted forest component of semi-natural forests is considered fi rst, followed by forest plantation data from FRA 2005, but with some amendments.
4.2.1 Planted forest component of semi-natural forest
About half of all forests reported as semi-natural were allocated to the new cat- egory of ‘planted’. And, as Fig. 4.2 indicates, this proportion seems to be rising with time and suggests preference is increasingly being given to planting as a way of ensuring restocking.
0 20,000 40,000 60,000 80,000 100,000 120,000 140,000 160,000
Assisted 1990 Assisted 2000 Assisted 2005 Planted 1990 Planted 2000 Planted 2005 Regeneration method
Area (‘000 ha)
Asia Europe N. and C. America
Fig. 4.2. Semi-natural forests by regeneration method by region, 1990–2005: ‘assisted’1 and ‘planted’ components. Little forest was reported in this semi-natural category from Africa, Oceania and South America.
The surprising statistic is the total. The planted component of semi-natural forests, estimated at 130 million ha in 2005, is greater than the 110 million ha for all productive plantations in FRA 2005 (FAO, 2006a) and only a little less than the total of all plantations (Table 4.2 below). Less surprising is that Asia and Europe account for 90% of where planting in semi-natural forests is classifi ed as planted forest. In addition to China and India, where much tree planting is of native species in restocking, forest-rich countries such as Sweden and Finland, which rely heavily on planting to achieve regeneration, feature strongly (Appen- dix).
Discriminating between productive and protective functions for the planted forests component of semi-natural forests shows considerable variation between countries and regions (Table 4.1). The greater proportion, a little over 70%, is classifi ed as productive, but a still sizeable area of planting is primarily for protec- tive purposes of erosion control, habitat preservation, amenity and related non- industrial purposes.
4.2.2 Plantations
The Global Forest Resources Assessment 2005 (FAO, 2006a) obtained informa- tion from 229 countries. The area estimates for plantations came from responses by 150 countries reporting at least some productive plantations, but only 95 countries allocated some of their plantations to the ‘protective’ category. Several countries responded that data were unavailable. At least two countries, Germany and Canada, where there are believed to be plantations established according to the FRA defi nition, had insuffi cient data – Germany responding that no national plantations existed, and Canada that insuffi cient information was available.
Furthermore, the data for some other countries which did respond are not always reliable due to the absence of recent inventories. As mentioned earlier, desk stud- ies were undertaken for countries unable to respond to the questionnaire.
Table 4.1. Areas of planted component of semi-natural forests by productive and protective functions: questionnaires and desk studies (’000 ha).
Regions
Semi-natural 1990 Semi-natural 2000 Semi-natural 2005 Productive Protective Productive Protective Productive Protective
Africa 1,044 494 1,003 504 963 538
Asia 36,027 18,277 37,822 21,333 41,758 25,338
Europe 36,652 9,218 39,820 9,919 41,363 10,062
North and Central America
3,976 0 8,147 0 10,206 0
Oceania 0 0 0 0 0 0
South America 25 0 25 0 25 0
World 77,724 27,990 86,817 31,756 94,315 35,938
105,714 118,573 130,252
Table 4.2, from FRA 2005 with some minor additions, reproduces the same format as in Table 4.1 to show plantation areas by region and function for 1990, 2000 and 2005.
Table 4.2 shows the dramatic increase in areas of forest plantation reported in the 15 years from 1990. The largest resource is in Asia, where China, which has a larger area of plantations (31.7 million ha) than any other country, and to a lesser extent India, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam and Turkey, dominate. In Europe, the Russian federation accounts for the largest area of plantations by far (17 million ha), though several countries have well in excess of 1 million ha – France, Spain, Portugal, Ukraine and the UK. In North America, the USA, as was noted in Chapter 2, has the great bulk of the resource (17 million ha). Other countries reporting sizeable areas include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, Iran, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa and Sudan.
The relative proportions of plantations allocated to productive and protective functions are as variable as that noted earlier for the planted for- ests component of semi-natural forests. The proportion in the productive category – over three-quarters of all plantations – is greater, which is to be expected in view of the investment and intensity of management plantations normally entail. Perhaps what is unexpected is the high level of protective plantations reported by some countries, namely Japan (100%), Mexico (93%) and India (67%). However, this in part may refl ect a question of defi - nition and the somewhat artifi cial distinction between productive and protec- tive: as has been reiterated more than once, all planted forests can serve several functions at the same time – be multi-purpose. It’s just a question of the priority or objective accorded.
4.2.3 Total area of planted forest
Table 4.3 simply combines Tables 4.1 and 4.2 and shows that the planted forests subset amounts to 271 million ha in 2005, or remarkably nearly 7% of all forest Table 4.2. Plantation areas allocated to productive and protective functions (’000 ha).
Regions
Plantation 1990 Plantation 2000 Plantation 2005 Productive Protective Productive Protective Productive Protective
Africa 10,163 2,083 10,581 2,283 10,876 2,462
Asia 28,925 17,666 36,206 19,459 44,414 20,474
Europe 17,942 4,588 20,997 5,591 21,651 6,027
North and Central America
10,595 187 16,711 1,227 17,653 1,190
Oceania 2,447 1 3,477 14 3,833 32
South America 9,094 39 11,383 54 12,132 57
World 79,165 24,562 99,356 28,628 110,560 30,259
103,727 127,984 140,819
in the world. Table 4.3 also shows that the total area is increasing at nearly 2% per year.
Equally remarkable is that the area of ‘plantations’ (Table 4.2) only repre- sents about half of the total, yet it is ‘plantations’ that have attracted most of the attention in earlier resource assessments. In view of the similarities in manage- ment between the planted forests component of semi-natural forests and forest plantations generally, the expectation must be that a much higher proportion of wood production has come from this subset than hitherto realized. Perhaps the history of planting over the last 200 years should have made this obvious. Nev- ertheless, to discover just what the contribution is from the whole planted forests subset is the purpose of the next section.