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Commonwealth
Forests | | |
 EXTENT OF THE FOREST RESOURCE
Forests in Commonwealth countries cover over 800 M ha, or just over one fifth of the world’s
forest area (see Annex 2.1 for details). This figure, which refers to forests with a canopy cover
of more than 10 per cent and an area of more than 0.5 ha1, includes all types of forest from
primary, undisturbed forest, through natural and semi-natural forests which have been modified
by human activity, to plantations.
Three Commonwealth countries, Canada (310 M ha), Australia (163.7 M ha) and India (67.7 M
ha) are among the world’s ten countries with the largest extent of national forest estate. Other
Commonwealth countries with more than 20 M ha of forest include Cameroon (21.2 M ha),
Tanzania (35.3 M ha), Zambia (42.5 M ha) in Africa, and Malaysia (20.9 M ha), and Papua
New Guinea (29.4 M ha) in South-east Asia.
The importance of forests to a country may not, however, be measured only in terms of area.
A different picture emerges when considering the proportion of the land area covered by forest:
Guyana has 77% of the land area under forest, followed by Belize (73%), Malaysia (64%),
Dominica (61%) and Zambia (57%). A third way of looking at the potential contribution of
forests to the country’s environment, economy and culture is to consider the area of forest per
head: Guyana has 19.6 ha of forest/head of population, Canada has 9.7 ha/head, Australia 8.1
ha/head, Botswana 6.9 ha/head, Belize 5.8 ha/head and Papua New Guinea 5.2 ha/head. But
measuring the adequacy of the forest estate has less to do with those countries that have a
large forest area, a large proportion of the land’s surface under forest, or a high figure for forest
area per head. Rather, it is the many Commonwealth countries with less than 10% of the land
area under forest, and/or less than 0.1 ha of forest per head, which need to consider how they
can meet demand for forest goods and services; the special situations of forests in Low Forest
Cover Countries, Small Island Developing States and on Mountains are reviewed in the box
(below). Trees are also found outside forests. Information on Other Wooded Land (OWL),
defined as land not classified as forest, covering more than 0.5 ha, with trees more than 5 m
high and a canopy cover of 5-10 per cent, is not as complete or reliable as on forests, but it is
likely that OWL covers around 2.8 M ha in Commonwealth countries. Such trees may be
unmanaged relicts of cleared forest, or they may be systematically managed stands in
agroforestry systems. The latter may serve a number of environmental and economic
functions, which may be similar to forests in principle if not in extent. Trees in OWL are highly
difficult to classify and inventory because they are so heterogeneous, and hence it is difficult to
develop policies for their promotion. But the regional totals, especially that of Africa, show
the
potential contribution of this resource to forest goods and services - often especially important
to rural people - and to the poor in particular, who may rely on a wide range of non-timber
forest products obtained from OWL for their domestic energy and livelihoods.
1
The full definition is in the Glossary.
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