The foregoing assessments of selected countries in the region, while not leading to precise figures on the area of NFAs, or on the volume of NFA-based wood production, could point to broad conclusions which can be summarized as follows:
(1) Natural forest areas are declining and will continue to decrease because of rising people pressure and intensifying competition with other land uses.(2) The magnitude of wood harvests from the natural forest will correspondingly decline not only because of the reduction of the forest base but also because increasing portions of the remaining forests are withdrawn by government from productive use and set aside for ecological conservation, biodiversity maintenance, parks and recreation and watershed conservation and protection in support of lowland agriculture and hydropower generation.
(3) Shrinkage of natural forest areas could be arrested and reversed if: (i) strong political will is exercised to establish and fully protect permanent forest reserves for production, watershed and other environmental purposes; (ii) parallel measures are put in place to reduce excessive population growth rates; (iii) strong programmes are formulated to provide alternative livelihood for the upland dwellers.
(4) Non-forest areas will continue to increase in area and NFA-derived wood outputs will rise as private tree plantations are established by entrepreneurial farmers and as government-supported, community-managed, people-oriented forestry programmes expand to fill the widening gap between available wood resources and escalating wood requirements.
(5) The broad outlook for the next dozen years up to 2010 are as follows: (i) Countries in the region with exceptionally heavy population densities (e.g., India, Bangladesh), limited land areas and limited forests will face severe fuelwood and small-timber shortages which can be alleviated by increased wood production in NFAs; (ii) other countries will be able to produce sufficient fuelwood and small-sized industrial wood through a combination of sustainable production from the remaining natural forests and intensified production from expanded non-forest areas.
