The Future of the World's Forests

At the landmark 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit), solemn resolutions were made both to protect the world s biodiversity and to co-operate on managing natural forests in a sustainable and ecologically responsible way. If anything, given recent developments in issues such as climate change and poverty, the problem of protecting and sustaining forests should logically have become more important globally. Yet public interest in, and development support for, forest activities have declined and rates of forest loss remain stubbornly high.