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Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020

Main report











​FAO. 2020. Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020: Main report. Rome.




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    Project
    Enhancing Global Forest Management through Improved Global Forest Information - GCP/GLO/665/EC 2023
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    Forests ecosystems play a key role in the livelihoods of the world population, especially in developing countries, not only with respect to the environment, but also in terms of their contribution to broader social issues. In this context, FAO has been monitoring the world’s forests at five-to-ten year intervals since 1948. The Global Forest Resources Assessments (FRA) are now produced every five years, and describe the world’s forests and how they are changing. They are based on country reports compiled by officially nominated national correspondents (NCs) and their collaborators. The results of the last assessment preceding this project (FRA 2015) were published in September 2015. Since then, major global developments have taken place, increasingly highlighting the need for high-quality data to better understand forests’ role in climate change and their contribution to sustainable development. The European Union is a key partner of the FRA programmeand has been supporting the global assessments since FRA 2010. It provided financial support for the implementation of the FRA programme, and more specifically for the implementation of the FRA 2020 reporting cycle, through this project. The overall objective of the project was to contribute to sustainable development and livelihood sustenance through sustainable forest management.
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    Article
    Carbon emissions and removals from forests: new estimates, 1990–2020 2021
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    National, regional and global CO2 emissions and removals from forests were estimated for the period 1990–2020 using as input the country reports of the Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020. The new Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates, based on a simple carbon stock change approach, update published information on net emissions and removals from forests in relation to (a) net forest conversion and (b) forest land. Results show a significant reduction in global emissions from net forest conversion over the study period, from a mean of 4.3 in 1991–2000 to 2.9 Gt CO2 yr−1 in 2016–2020. At the same time, forest land was a significant carbon sink globally but decreased in strength over the study period, from −3.5 to −2.6 Gt CO2 yr−1. Combining net forest conversion with forest land, our estimates indicated that globally forests were a small net source of CO2 to the atmosphere on average during 1990–2020, with mean net emissions of 0.4 Gt CO2 yr−1. The exception was the brief period 2011–2015, when forest land removals counterbalanced emissions from net forest conversion, resulting in a global net sink of −0.7 Gt CO2 yr−1. Importantly, the new estimates allow for the first time in the literature the characterization of forest emissions and removals for the decade just concluded, 2011–2020, showing that in this period the net contribution of forests to the atmosphere was very small, i.e., a sink of less than −0.2 Gt CO2 yr−1 – an estimate not yet reported in the literature. This near-zero balance was nonetheless the result of large global fluxes of opposite sign, namely net forest conversion emissions of 3.1 Gt CO2 yr−1 counterbalanced by net removals on forest land of −3.3 Gt CO2 yr−1. Finally, we compared our estimates with data independently reported by countries to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change, indicating close agreement between FAO and country emissions and removals estimates. Data from this study are openly available via the Zenodo portal (Tubiello, 2020), with DOI https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3941973, as well as in the FAOSTAT (Food and Agriculture Organization Corporate Statistical Database) emissions database (FAO, 2021a).
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    Book (stand-alone)
    Report of the Twenty-seventh Session of the Asia-Pacific Forestry Commission
    Colombo, Sri Lanka 24-27 October 2017
    2018
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    This publication reports the proceedings of the twenty-sixth session of the Asia-Pacific Forestry Commission (APFC) held in Colombo, Sri Lanka, from 23 to 27 October 2017. The main themes considered were: Forestry in a new landscape; Guidelines for using forest concessions to manage public forests; Regional Strategy and Action Plan for forest and landscape restoration; Forests and climate change: Progress since Paris, financing climate; State of Forestry in Asia and the Pacific; Progress in Implementing APFC- and FAO-Supported Activities in the Region; Trees in Urban Landscapes; Asia-Pacific Forest Sector Outlook Study; An Asia-Pacific Strategy for Implementing the Global Plan of Action on Forest Genetic Resources; New landscapes for community forestry; Forest Resources Assessment 2020 and Efforts for Reducing Reporting Burden by Streamlining International Forest-related Reporting; and Outcome of Global Policy Processes of Relevance for The Regional Forestry. The main recommendations are included in the report.

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