For a number of years now, the international community has been aware of the ominous threats facing forests throughout our planet. Even those living in developed countries, far from the tropical and arid areas of the Third World and only vaguely conscious of these threats up to now, have had to bow to facts. The damage caused by air pollution and forest fires in the Mediterranean is a reminder that the availability of the numerous goods and services man draws from the forest can be, at any moment, called into question anywhere in the world.
It is true that forest vegetation often shows a remarkable capacity for recovery, but by making excessive demands upon it for too long or by playing the sorcerer's apprentice and regarding nature by definition as a lavish donor, the present generations run the risk of jeopardizing not only their own well-being and existence but also those of their offspring. The problem is by no means new. At the beginning of the last century. Chateaubriand expressed it very tersely: "Forests precede men, deserts follow them. Today, however, unlike in times past, there are very few areas and communities whose forests and woody vegetation have not been cleared or depleted and degraded in one way or another.
The seriousness and scale of the problem require that the community of nations be awakened to make far greater efforts than those made in the past at all levels - global, regional, national and local.
FAO and its statutory bodies have taken important steps to this effect. As is known, the FAO Council proclaimed 1985 the International Year of the Forest. Among the major events that marked the year - which was also FAO's 40th anniversary - the most important was the Ninth World Forestry Congress held in Mexico City in July, reviewed in this issue of Unasylva by N. Sanchez-Mejorada and F. Barrientos.
Another important initiative that will have an impact during the years to come is the Tropical Forestry Action Plan adopted by the FAO Committee on Forest Development in the Tropics at its seventh session in Rome in June of last year. Consisting of programmes in the five most urgent fields of action at the global level - forestry in land use, forest-based industrial development, fuelwood and energy, conservation of tropical forest ecosystems, and institutions - the plan is intended to serve as a framework for greater harmonization and strengthening of international cooperation in the field of tropical forestry.
It has already been used, besides by FAO, by multilateral agencies, namely the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programmer by countries such as the Netherlands and France, which carry out bilateral cooperation programmes with tropical countries; and by non-governmental organizations such as the Washington. D.C.-based World Resources Institute.
Investment needs are given in the plan for each of the five high-priority areas. They total US$15 000 million for the next ten years, excluding investment in the forest industries themselves. Of this total, US$2 000 million represent technical assistance by multilateral and bilateral agencies. Country-by-country estimates of investment needs for the next five years in 53 tropical countries carried out by the World Bank amount to US$4 600 million. These converging estimates indicate that the efforts required are about double those currently being made and, furthermore, that even the figures quoted are too low compared with expenditures made in other sectors that are less vital for the present and for the future of humanity.
This issue of Unasylva in a way mirrors the Tropical Forestry Action Plan, since its main articles deal with international investment in forestry (S.E. McGaughey) and matters related to three important programmes of the plan: fuelwood and energy (G. Foley); watershed management, which constitutes a section of the programme on forestry in land use (U. Chanphaka); and forest industries (T.M. Maloney).
