Except for China and the Republic of Korea which have carried out national forest inventories, the existing information in the countries covered in the present report is inadequate even to meet the needs of global forest resources state and change. Planning for conservation and sustainable development of forest at national level in most of these countries requires much more data.
The sub-national data collected and stored in the FORIS database is useful to identify critical areas in terms of environmental risks related to deforestation and forest degradation. The present level of forest cover, compared to the potential cover in most of the countries, is very low. Most of the remaining natural forests are confined to mountain areas due to their inaccessibility and marginal suitability for agriculture. The further decline of natural forest cover should be carefully monitored and changes evaluated in the light of consequences for the conservation of soil, water and biological diversity.
At present the coverage by GIS for these countries is very limited. For forestry planning at subnational and local levels more efforts are needed in the concerned countries, to collect and compile cartographic information in the form of GIS.
The trends in forest cover changes estimated through the models used in the present study, should be considered only indicative and supplemented by additional information on the deforestation and forest degradation processes. The use of remote sensing techniques and, in particular, the interdependent interpretation of multi-temporal satellite imagery is highly recommended to study the process of change on a reliable basis.
Besides more accurate statistics on forest resources state and change, socio-economic variables associated with deforestation and with the forest degradation processes should be collected and analyzed. This will help in understanding of the cause and effect relationships in detail and in formulating alternative development scenarios and appropriate policies.
Except in a few countries, the priority assigned to forest resources assessment in the countries covered is generally low despite the serious environmental problems caused by deforestation and forest degradation. Action on capacity building in forest resources assessment is urgently needed to support development of sustainable forestry.
