The main forest are fastly changing into barre, unproductive land scape;give reason
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Forest plantations:
the good, the bad and the ugly
© Stora Enso
There’s nothing quite like plantations for stirring up a heated debate in forestry
circles. Some see forest plantations as the answer not only to the growing demand for
timber and wood fibre, but also to the problem of natural forest loss. Plantations, they
say, lessen the need to log natural forests and thus contribute to the conservation of
forest biodiversity. Others, however, see forest plantations as biological deserts, water
guzzlers, livelihood saboteurs and carbuncles on the landscape. Plantations, they say,
actually increase pressure on natural forests by replacing diversity with monocultural
monotony and flooding the market with cheap fibre that can either make natural
forest management uncompetitive or, somewhat to the contrary, help raise consumer
demand for wood products from planted and natural forests alike.
Alongside this rather polarized debate, a diverse group of actors from government,
NGO and industry is searching for ways of enhancing the contribution of forest
plantations both to local livelihoods and landscape-level forest conservation. A number
of institutions, including the FSC and FAO, are currently undertaking multi-stakeholder
reviews on the issue. WWF and IUCN are closely involved in these initiatives and are
actively supporting efforts, such as that of The Forests Dialogue, to increase the level
of knowledge, bring more balance to the debate and help develop sensible workable
solutions.
Planted forests are neither inherently good nor bad; rather it is the choices we
make about how to use them that determine whether they contribute to, or detract
from, broader societal goals such as poverty reduction and nature conservation.
Whether we like it or not, plantations are here to stay and are capable of delivering
ancillary social and environmental co-benefits. Dismissing plantations as “not forests”
but simply just another agricultural crop is therefore counterproductive. Whether at
the smallholder or industrial level, planted forests can and ought to be managed to
optimize the delivery of other forest values beyond that of wood fibre production.
In this issue of arborvitæ, we examine plantations from a range of different
perspectives and explore the wider role that they can play in forest conservation
and local livelihoods.