Forest pathways for green recovery and building inclusive, resilient and sustainable economies

The 2022 edition of The State of the World’s Forests explores the potential of three forest pathways for achieving green recovery and tackling environmental crises, including climate change and biodiversity loss against the backdrop of the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use and the pledge of 140 countries to eliminate forest loss by 2030 and to support restoration and sustainable production and consumption.

The three interrelated pathways are halting deforestation and maintaining forests; restoring degraded lands and expanding agroforestry; and sustainably using forests and building green value chains. The balanced, simultaneous pursuit of these pathways can generate sustainable economic and social benefits for countries and their rural communities, help sustainably meet increasing global demand for materials, and address environmental challenges.

The State of the World’s Forests 2022 presents evidence on the feasibility and value of the pathways and outlines initial steps that could be taken to further pursue them. There is no time to lose – action is needed now to keep the global temperature increase below 1.5 °C, reduce the risk of future pandemics, ensure food security and nutrition for all, eliminate poverty, conserve the planet’s biodiversity, and offer young people hope of a better world and a better future for all.

The publication will be launched during the XV World Forestry Congress being held in Seoul, Republic of Korea and virtually.
Human-induced degradation affects 34 percent of agricultural land: one-fifth of human-induced degraded land is in sub-Saharan Africa, followed by Southern America at 17 percent; Northern America and South Asia contribute 11 percent to global degradation; and, in relative terms, South Asia is the most-affected region, with 41 percent of its
area suffering from human-induced degradation.

Climate change and human influence affect the dynamics of forest ecosystems and their resilience to invasive species and diseases – with potentially very large ecological and economic impacts. For example, estimates show that southern pine beetle-induced timber mortality in the southern United States of America caused losses to timber producers of about USD 1.2 billion between 1982 and 2010 (i.e. USD 43 million per year, on average).

The average annual damage caused by bark beetles in forests in parts of Europe (i.e. Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Luxemburg and the Netherlands) is projected to be almost six times higher in 2021–2030 than it was between 1971 and 2010.