Subject: THE FOREST TRANSITION A long-term viewpoint is useful in understanding past and likely future trends in deforestation. While forests are disappearing rapidly in much of the developing world, those in most industrialized countries have stabilized or even begun expanding. This shift from shrinking to expanding forests is often referred to as the forest transition (Mather 1992), and the way it has proceeded in developed countries may shed some light on the likely direction of forest area change in less developed ones. In the developed world population growth has been an influential factor in the forest transition. For example, the ancient forests of Europe once covered most of the continent. But they were thinned out and eventually disappeared over the last millenium as the success of agriculture fueled population growth and the growing demand for timber, fuelwood and cleared land for crops and grazing animals. Centuries of degradation from soil erosion and over-harvesting transformed huge areas of forest into rangelands dotted by shrubs and bushes. By the late 17th century, less than 10 percent of England remained forested (Morin et al 1996). The United States followed a similar pattern, with cropland expanding in line with population growth well into the 20th century. These sustained and often steep declines in forest cover were followed by a period of stabilization and then a gradual increase in forest size. Biologists and conservationists accurately point out that the new forests differ from the ancient ecosystems they replace, even though in some respects--from economic value to protection of soils and watersheds--the new secondary forests play similar roles to the original primary ones. In England, the switch to coal as the Industrial Revolution's fuel of choice greatly reduced the demand for wood, though by that time most of the country's forest cover had already been cleared. In the United States, improvements in agricultural technology enabled farmers to grow more food on less land, reducing the need for additional forest clearing. The transition can also relate to the kinds of forests being used. Over time, Europe and North America have shifted from cutting down their old-growth forests to supplying more and more of their wood needs from plantations, while reserving the remaining natural forests for conservation. The traditional "cut-and-run" or "mining" approach to forests has begun to shift to an emphasis on sustainability and on ecosystem services, not just commodities. These kinds of qualitative changes in forest management can be critical to the success of the transition in ecological terms. The forest transition occurred at different times and to differing degrees in England and the United States, but they shared common factors: dramatic slowing of once-rapid population growth, revolutions in agricultural technology, and falling demand for forest products, notably woodfuel. Today's developing countries are experiencing the pattern of rising populations and shrinking forests characteristic of the early phase of the forest transition. However, the populations of these countries at the end of the 20th century are much larger than those of Europe and North America when those transitions occurred decades ago. It is still early to be confident that developing countries will be able to complete this transition while escaping permanent ecosystem damage at the local and possibly global levels. Ongoing declines in fertility rates in these countries could hasten the transition, reducing the risk of ecological disruption and increasing the possibility that the forests of the tropics will some day begin to expand. POPULATION CHANGE: A WORLD OF OPPORTUNITY The global trend towards smaller families represents one of the most hopeful signs for the preservation of the world's remaining forests. Declining birthrates--the product of changing ideals about family size and improved access to family planning services--are slowing population growth faster than demographers expected only a few years ago. If governments take action today to make reproductive health care more widely available and to improve educational and economic opportunities for girls and women, world population may peak before the middle of the 21st century and then decrease modestly. Such a trend would be among the most positive forces affecting the transition to truly sustainable development. Although the United Nations has revised downward its projections of future population growth, an actual decline in world population is unlikely any time soon for several reasons. First, rather than being at the end of the historic rise in human numbers often referred to as the "population explosion," we are actually just past the halfway point to projected population stabilization. The global decline in fertility from roughly six to less than three births per woman still leaves fertility above the two-child replacement fertility level required for population to eventually reach relative stability in the absence of migration. In addition, the high fertility levels of the recent past have produced the largest generation in history of women about to enter their childbearing years (Bongaarts 1998). Moreover, death rates overall remain at historic lows. As a result, births will exceed deaths for the foreseeable future even if couples have only two children, causing population to grow well into the next century. This phenomenon is the result of population momentum, the tendency of a population to continue past growth trends for some time after fertility changes occur, simply because today's reproducing generation is the product of fertility rates of several decades ago. The UN Population Fund estimates that raising the age at which mothers have their first child from 18 to 23 would reduce by over 40 percent the impact of population momentum on future population growth (UNFPA 1998). Lower rates of population growth will improve the future per capita availability of forest resources at the national and global levels. The trend towards below-replacement fertility in many developed countries, where consumption levels are highest, could reduce the amount of industrial logging as the demand for wood declines. In developing regions, increases in girls' education and family planning services can hasten the transition from natural resource-based economies to those based on human capital. These types of social investments reduce pressure on natural resources not only by directly improving human welfare and productivity, but also by slowing population growth as women postpone and limit childbearing to pursue economic opportunities. Strengthening international support for these programs and policies can help transform the demographic bulge in developing countries into a demographic bonus that will greatly enhance the prospects of current and future generations. By understanding that sound population policy is founded on social investments and human rights, we can consider how population and forestry policy can work together to stabilize or even increase the availability of trees and forests for each human being. With the emerging possibility that world population will peak before the middle of the next century, the future of the world's forests appears at least a bit brighter than before. MESSAGES FOR POLICYMAKERS AND THE MEDIA -- The world's forests provide a wide array of economically important goods, such as housing materials, furniture and paper. Furthermore, the "ecosystem services" they perform-- for free--sustain millions of plants and animal species, maintain air and water quality on which human life and health depend, help regulate climate, and counter global warming. -- The loss and degradation of forests is most severe in developing countries, where more than 95 percent of the world's annual population growth of about 78 million people occurs. -- In less than four decades, the forest-to-people-ratio-- that is, the area of forest available to each person to supply the broad array of goods and services that forests provide--has fallen by more than 50 percent, from a global average of 1.2 hectares in 1960 to 0.6 hectares in 1995. More than 1.7 billion people live in 40 nations with a scarcity of forest resources. -- Different kinds of forests satisfy different needs. Plantations can produce large amounts of wood or paper, but they cannot substitute for natural forests in protecting biodiversity. -- Population-related pressure on forests is greatest in countries where the existing area of forest cover per capita is low. Increasing rural populations in developing countries rely heavily on forests for their daily subsistence needs in the form of fuel, fodder, timber, and farmland. -- Each American consumes 15 times as much industrial roundwood as the average person living in a developing country. -- Lasting solutions to the loss of the world's forests must address both population and consumption levels. The global trend towards smaller families represents one of the most hopeful signs for the preservation of the world's remaining forests. -- Lower rates of population growth will improve the future per capita availability of forest resources at the national and global levels. -- By understanding that sound population policy is founded on social investments and human rights, we can consider how population and forestry policy can work together to stabilize or even increase the availability of trees and forests for each human being. -- The United States made a commitment at the United Nations Population Conference in Cairo in 1994 to support international family planning efforts. The United States should re-establish a leadership role in family planning funding and set an example for both donor and recipient countries. [This information update is based primarily on Population Action International's 1999 report "Forest Futures: Population, Consumption and Wood Resources" by Tom Gardner- Outlaw and Robert Engelman. To order the full text of this report, please visit the PAI website at http://www.populationaction.org . Doug Boucher summarized and supplemented the information. Fred Meyerson, Peter Frumhoff, Nancy Cole, and Katie Mogelgaard provided review and comments.] SOURCES Bongaarts, John, "Demographic Consequences of Declining Fertility," Science (16 October 1998): 419-420. Brooks, David, "Demand for Wood and Forest Products: Macroeconomic and Management Issues," in Proceedings of the XI World Forestry Congress (Antalys, Turkey: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 1997). Brown, Sandra, Estimating Biomass and Biomass Change of Tropical Forests: A Primer, FAO Forestry Paper 134 (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 1997). Brown, Katrina and David Pearce, ed., The Causes of Tropical Deforestation: The Economic and Statistical Analysis of Factors Giving Rise to the Loss of Tropical Forests (Vancouver, UBC Press, 1994). Brunner, Jake, Kirk Talbott, and Chantal Elkin, Logging Burma's Frontier Forests: Resources and the Regime (Washington, DC: World Resources Institute, 1998). Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, FAOSTAT Statistics Database on CD-ROM (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization, 1998). Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, State of the World's Forests, 1997 (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization, 1997). Mather, Alexander, "The Forest Transition," Area 24, no. 4 (1992): 367-379. Mather, Alexander, J. Fairbairn, and C. L. Needle, "The Human Drivers of Global Land Cover Change: The Case of Forests," Hydrological Processes 12, no. 13-14 (1998). May, Robert M, "How many species?" Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B, 330 (1990): 293-204. Morin, G.-A. et al, Long-Term Historical Changes in the Forest Resource, Geneva Timber and Forest Study Papers, no. 10 (Geneva: United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, 1996). Radka, Mark, Policy and Institutional Aspects of the Sustainable Paper Cycle: An Asian Perspective (United Nations Environment Programme, Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, 1994). Saxena, Ashok, Jagdish Nautiyal, and David Foot, "Understanding the Role of Population in Deforestation," Journal of Sustainable Forestry 7, no. 1-2 (1998): 57-107. Solberg, Birger, ed., "Long-Term Trends and Prospects," in World Supply and Demand for Wood and Implications for Sustainable Forest Management, European Forest Institute Research Report 6 (Joensuu, Finland: European Forest Institute, 1996). United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), The State of World Population 1998: The New Generations (New York: The United Nations, 1998). ADDITIONAL SUGGESTED READING Costanza, Robert et al., "The Value of the World's Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital," Nature, May 15, 1997, 253- 260. Vandermeer, John and Ivette Perfecto, Breakfast of Biodiversity: The Truth About Rain Forest Destruction. (Food First Books, 1995). Westoby, Jack, Introduction to World Forestry: People and Their Trees. (Blackwell Publishers, 1989).