DURBAN, 30 November 2011 (IRIN) - As countries debate a climate changing deal to save the planet, a new satellite-based survey released by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) shows we lost forest cover the size of 10 football stadiums per minute in the 15 years between 1990 and 2005.
The good news is that the net forest loss is less than “we had estimated through data collated from countries”, said Eduardo Rojas-Briales, FAO Assistant Director-General of Forestry. “In a sense, this is our first independent data”.
The agency had to depend on information put together by countries, but lack of capacity to conduct surveys in some meant they relied on old data.
In 2005, the world’s forested area was 3.69 billion hectares, or 30 percent of the global land area, which means the world has lost 72.9 million hectares, or 32 percent less than the previously estimated figure of 107.4 million hectares.
It has taken the FAO five years to perfect the process of being able to use the data produced by global remote sensing, Rojas-Briales says the agency hopes to have the 2010 data ready for release in 2012. read more>>>
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