The total forested area in the world exceeds 4 billion hectares, representing an average of approximately 0.6 hectares per person. South America has the largest forest cover (49%); Brazil, with 520 million hectares (FAO, 2010), ranks second among the world’s countries in its expanse of forests. The importance of this sector with regard to climate change lies in its great potential for mitigating greenhouse gases. Thus, the “Copenhagen Accord” recognizes the crucial importance of reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation plus conservation (REDD-plus), improving sustainable forest management, increasing the forest carbon stock in the developed countries, and providing incentives for these actions through a mechanism that includes REDD-plus. Such an approach would make it easier to mobilize funds for developing countries and aid mitigation efforts designed to slow deforestation and forest degradation.

In November 2009, in attempts to preserve the forests and slow deforestation, the Governments of Guyana and Norway signed a memorandum of understanding for cooperation on issues related to combating climate change, protecting biodiversity and improving sustainable development, with a particular focus on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in the framework of REDD-plus. Within the region, Panama, the Plurinational State of Bolivia and Paraguay are part of the UN-REDD programme that helps developing countries formulate and implement national REDD-plus strategies. In addition, a number of countries in the region are carrying out conservation and forest management initiatives (figure 3.17). Among the mitigation measures announced by Brazil in the framework of the “Copenhagen Accord” is an initiative to reduce deforestation in Amazonia and the Cerrado, as well as efforts to restore grasslands. Mexico, within its national strategy to combat climate change, also considers sustainable forest management to be one of the means of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions.

The pace of deforestation, while showing signs of slowing at the global level, continues to be a source of serious concern for Latin America and

Deteriorated forest hotspots

Deforestation Fragmentation

Cultivated or partially cultivated areas

Sources: F. Achard et al, Identification of deforestation hot spot areas in the humid tropics, Research Report, Nº 4, UE, 1998; FAO, Global Forest Resources Assessment, 2005.

Figure 3.18

the Caribbean. While the region’s forests represent one of the most important potential sources for mitigating GHG emissions, LAC accounted for approximately 70% of the world’s decrease in forests between 2005 and 2010 (FAO, 2010). The global forest resource assessment (FRA) conducted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) identifies Brazil as the country with the greatest net annual loss of forest area in the world, though this must be viewed as a historical process caused by multiple factors, both internal and external. Between 1990 and 2000, Brazil lost 2.8 million hectares per year (ha/year) of forests, while between 2000 and 2010 the loss was 2.6 million ha/year. The list of the ten countries with the highest net forest losses in the last decade includes the Plurinational State of Bolivia and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, with a combined loss of 290,000 ha/year. These countries, along with Peru, Mexico, Colombia and Ecuador, constitute critical areas of deforestation in the region (figure 3.18).

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