III. The forest resource

The world's forests
Removals of roundwood
Factors affecting the wood-producing potential of the forests
Prospects for the period up to 1975

Broadly speaking, forests of one type or another cover nearly a third of the world's land surface. Forests therefore constitute a principal form of land use, and as such have a number of highly important functions, such as protection, in addition to that of producing wood. The present study considers only this productive aspect of the forest, and examines the other roles of the forests only to the extent that they affect its capacity to produce wood. It should be kept in mind, therefore, that what is being dealt with here is only a part of the overall function and value of the forest.

The greater part of the present chapter is devoted to assembling and examining the quantitative data relating to the magnitude and distribution of the natural and man-made forests; to the size, nature and evolution of production of wood in the recent past; and to other relevant factors, for example, losses from destructive agents such as fire, and encroachment of competing uses of forest land such as agriculture. Given the purpose and scope of the study as a whole, attention is concentrated more on the volumes and types of wood likely to be forth coming from the forest, and less upon the underlying policies, techniques and institutional setting. This does not mean that the importance of these factors has been overlooked, only that they can be more properly considered elsewhere than in such a review of production, trade and consumption of wood.

All too little is known quantitatively about the world's forests. Over large parts of the world, forests have not been surveyed, and all that can be reported upon meaningfully on a national or regional scale is the area of the forests and of major forest conditions. Generally speaking, it is only for the temperate forests that useful estimates can be made of the aggregate volume of growing stock and of the total annual volume increment of the forests. The coverage given in this chapter is thus perforce uneven, an unevenness that reflects, inter alia, the different intensities with which the various types and areas of forest are used at present, but not necessarily the differences in their ultimate potential for producing wood.

The world's forests

Man-made forests

Differences in soil, climate, situation and history are reflected in the diversity of forest type present. In Table III-1 the world's forests are classified under six principal types, with a brief note on the main features and principal commercial woods of each. The approximate geographical distribution of these forest types is shown in the colored map that follows. This classification of course inevitably presents a very much oversimplified view of the forests. Each of the six types itself encompasses a wide variety of forest conditions. In addition there are other forest conditions, such as mangrove or bamboo forests, too small to warrant consideration on a global scale and so omitted from the table, but which are locally very important. However, such a simplified classification is of value in highlighting, from among an almost bewildering variety, some of the salient features relevant to a consideration of the actual and potential output of wood of the forests found in different parts of the world.

To begin, it will be appropriate to relate the distribution, magnitude and features of the forest conditions to the picture of consumption set out in the previous chapter. In Europe, the U.S.S.R., North America and Japan, the regions where most wood is consumed, the forests are predominantly coniferous. Across the north of all these regions runs a wide belt of heavily coniferous-forested land. In Canada, northern Europe, the Siberian provinces of the U.S.S.R. and the north of Japan, such forests cover the greater part of the land area. The proximity of this great coniferous resource to the heavily populated and economically advanced regions immediately to the south has obviously been of primary importance in shaping the pattern and nature of the use of wood, and of the wood-using industries.

Furthermore, these more populous regions are themselves quite heavily forested. Continental Europe, the European region of the U.S.S.R., the United States and Japan as a whole all have at least a quarter of their land area under forest. The mixed forests of these regions also have a large coniferous content. But apart from their location the coniferous forests offer other advantages. They contain only a limited number of species, producing wood which is relatively uniform in character, properties, and log sizes. They are therefore relatively easy to harvest, handle and process. Furthermore, the temperate broadleaved forests also contain relatively few species in any given area, which enhances their commercial usefulness.

The larger part of the temperate forests are now in use to a greater or lesser degree. An extensive road, rail or waterway infrastructure has given access to much of the area, and so the structure, growing stock volume and rate of growth of much of the forests all in some degree reflect the impact of the use, and management, to which they have been subjected.

TABLE III-1. - THE WORLD'S FORESTS

Forest type	Principal features	Principal commercial species
Cool coniferous forests	Occur in the Northern Hemisphere, forming a broad forest belt, the "taiga," circling the globe. The number of species in any one area is small. Trees are fairly uniformly sized. A relatively homogenous, long-fibered wood raw material is produced. In spite of heavy exploitation in the southern part and the occurrence of huge fires, the primitive aspects of this type have been preserved over large areas due to lack of accessibility and sparse populations.	These forests contain northern coniferous softwoods such as white spruce, black spruce and balsam fir in North America, Norway spruce and Scots pine in Europe and northwestern U.S.S.R., and larch in north eastern U.S.S.R.
Temperate mixed forests	Occur almost exclusively in the middle latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere. The number of species is considerably higher than in the previous type. Comprises a large amount of subtypes ranging from predominantly coniferous to practically pure broad-leaved types. The content of softwoods in this type is important as a source of industrial wood raw material - especially since many broadleaved species exhibit poor quality and form. Notable among the predominantly coniferous areas are the northern parts of the mixed forests in the U.S.S.R. and the forests on the west coast of North America. Other important areas are found in mountainous regions of Europe, Mexico, and in the Himalayas. The forests are generally located in parts of the world with the highest populations and have been subject to man's actions for a long time. Clearing for agricultural settlement has been widespread. The need for fuelwood has resulted in conversion of additional areas to "coppice forest." The structure of the forests has changed in many areas as a result of intensive management.	These forests supply most of the world's beech, oak and birch and such quality woods as walnut. They also have a very large coniferous content especially the forests of the U.S.S.R. and the douglas fir hemlock forests of the west coast of North America.
Warm temperate moist forests	Occur in warm temperate zones in both hemispheres. Although containing a large number of hard-wood species, forests of this type have been and are being heavily exploited in the more accessible areas for their content of softwoods. Natural forests are being replaced to an increasing degree by plantations with native or exotic softwood species.	Pines are the most important softwoods in this type, occur ring in a variety of species. The better known hardwoods include oaks and the eucalypts of Australia.
Equatorial rain forests	Occur all through the tropical regions wherever rainfall is abundant throughout the year, and are predominantly broadleaved. The number of species found within a few hectares may be as high as a hundred or more, resulting in a wide variety of wood characteristics. This heterogeneity gives rise to many problems in processing for industrial purposes. Except on their fringes, rain forests have hardly been touched by man in Latin America. In Africa and Asia, exploitation has been carried much further. The forests in these regions are now supplying a large part of the quality and large-sized hardwoods used in the world. Forest areas are steadily decreasing due to clearing for permanent agriculture. In many areas, forests are being farmed under shifting cultivation with subsequent transformation into secondary forest. Fringe forests are often subject to destruction by fires.	Commercially well-known species include in Latin America mahogany, cedar and green-heart, in Africa okoume, obeche, sipo, limba and African mahoganies; and in Asia species belonging to the dipterocarp family.

Because of the rather inclement climate, and generally moderate or poor sites which characterize much of the temperate forest area, neither growing stock volumes nor rates of growth are very high. As is shown in Table III-2, European forests contain an average of about 75 cubic meters per hectare and have a net annual increment of about 2.3 cubic meters per hectare. The higher levels of growing stock in the U.S.S.R. and North America reflect the considerable areas of old growth forest in the two regions.¹ The table also gives some idea of the variation within these areas. It will be noted that the areas of old growth forest are principally in the north and east of the U.S.S.R., and in the west of North America. These remain the great coniferous reserves of the world.

¹ The huge area of mature and overmature timber also accounts for the low overall average annual increment per hectare in the U.S.S.R. For the smaller area of forests in use in the country average net annual increment was 2.5 cubic meters per hectare in 1961.

TABLE III-2. - SELECTED FEATURES OF THE FORESTS OF THE NORTH TEMPERATE ZONE

	Forest area ¹	Growing stock		Average net annual growth
		Total	Per ha	Total	Per ha
EUROPE	Million ha	Million m³	m³	Million m³	m³
Northern Europe	52.0	3472	67	117	2.3
EEC	25.6	1965	77	75	2.9
United Kingdom and Ireland	1.9	116	61	4	2.1
Central Europe	13.2	1627	123	35	2.7
Southern Europe	32.6	1218	37	37	1.1
Eastern Europe	26.5	3006	113	76	2.9
Total	2151.8	711404	775	7344	72.3
U.S.S.R.
Southwest	69.6	6176	89.	..	..
Northwest	72.6	7641	105	..	..
Western Siberia	105.0	12747	121	..	..
Eastern Siberia	458.7	51391	112	..	..
Total	3705.9	877955	8110	8874	81.2
UNITED STATES
North	69.5	3865	56	137	2.0
South	81.4	3797	47	212	2.6
Rocky Mountains	26.5	2796	106	26	1.0
Pacific Coast	28.5	7324	257	86	3.0
Total	4205.9	917782	986	9461	92.2
CANADA
Atlantic	19.0	1037	55	19	..
Central	99.7	5772	58	90	..
Prairie	73.4	2807	38	37	..
British Columbia	53.8	10357	193	65	..
Total	5245.9	919973	981	9. 10211	..
Japan	623.4	81891	881	..	..

SOURCES: European timber trends and prospects: a new appraisal, 1960-1975. - soviet Statistical Yearbook 1961. - Timber trends in the United States. - Timber trends and prospects in Canada. - FAO world forest inventory, 1963.

¹ To which data on growing stock and growth refer. - ² Total forest land 1960. - ³ Stocked forest land in centrally-managed forests 1961. There is an additional 204.1 mill. hectares of forest land in the U.S.S.R. of which 84% is unstocked. - ⁴ Commercial forest land, 1962. - ⁵ Productive forest land, 1962, excluding protection reserves in which cutting of industrial wood is prohibited. - ⁶ Total forest land excluding protection reserves in which cutting of industrial wood is prohibited as reported in the FAO world forest inventory, 1963. - ⁷ Total volume without bark. - ⁸ Total volume with bark. - ⁹ Total volume without bark less deduction for rot and other defects affecting use for lumber. Excludes branches and tops less than 10 cm. - ¹⁰ Total allowable annual cut from presently economically accessible areas, assuming mixed pulpwood and sawtimber rotations.

Though coniferous woods predominate in the north temperate zone, there is little natural coniferous forest outside the zone (though such as there is - principally at higher altitudes in Africa, Asia and Latin America - is locally very important). Most tropical forests are made up exclusively of broadleaved species. The greater part of the volume of wood in the tropics is found concentrated in the rain forests, which contain the bulk of the volume of the world's broadleaved woods. But they have been very little used or managed for the production of wood, mainly because they are concentrated into regions which are relatively sparsely populated and at an early stage of development. As is shown on the map, the tropical rain forests are concentrated in and around the Amazon basin in Latin America, in west central Africa, and in southeast Asia, in particular in insular southeast Asia.

THE WORLD'S FORESTS

Also, the tropical rain forests contain a wide variety of species, exhibiting many different characteristics. It is not uncommon to find, within a limited area of forest, a hundred species that differ in their properties from extremely hard, heavy and slow growing to very soft, light and quick growing. This variety has been one factor that to date has hindered their harvesting and use.

Because these forests have been as yet so little brought under management little can be said about their magnitude. There are perhaps in total some 850 million hectares of tropical rain forests carrying roughly 125,000 million cubic meters (gross volume) of wood, which is about the same as the volume on the much larger area of north temperate forests. Growing stock volumes, including branches, in fact tend to be high in the tropical rain forests. But relatively little of this volume is of usable sizes, and even less is in commercially accepted species. In Latin America stocking is said to average probably around 200 to 300 cubic meters per hectare in old growth forest, but with an unusually large mixture of species, and with fewer commercial species and smaller log sizes than in Africa or southeast Asia. In old growth forests in west Africa wood volumes are reported to be typically of the order of 300 cubic meters per hectare, but with only up to about 80 cubic meters per hectare in commercial log sizes, and on average only about 20 cubic meters per hectare of this in species which are commercially acceptable at the present time. Old growth forests in southeast Asia also seem to attain these overall levels of stocking, but with a higher proportion of commercial volume, commonly reported as high as 100 to 150 cubic meters per hectare. But average volumes per hectare in the tropical forests tend to be much lower, because much of the area has been worked over under shifting cultivation, and sizable areas in Africa and southeast Asia have by now had some timber cut off them.

Apart from the tropical moist deciduous forests, which are rather limited in extent except in Asia, most of the other forests in the tropics and subtropics are dry, open woodlands, such as savanna. These forests contain very low volumes per hectare, most of it in small sizes, and only a few of the species they contain are of commercial value.

It is important to be aware of how much of the forest area is of this low-yielding type. In Africa, for example, only about one quarter of the total area of forest is closed high tropical rain forest. As 90 percent of it is in western Africa, most of the natural forest of the rest of Africa is of the sparse low-yielding type. The figures of forest area shown in Annex Table III-A must thus be interpreted bearing in mind the distribution of forest types shown on the map. As shown, the forests of wide areas of Latin America and south Asia, as well as of Africa, are of the savanna type.

The map and Annex Table III-A also draw attention to the inadequacy of the forest area of much of the more heavily populated parts of the world. Quite apart from the low and poor quality content of most of the dry forest areas, large parts of the world have little if any forest at all. This is the case with most of northern Africa and the Near East, and much of south Asia and China (Mainland). Together these areas contain roughly one third of the world's population, whose consumption of wood is as a consequence severely restricted.

In these areas man-made forests take on a special significance. In view of their fast-growing importance as a source of wood, plantations will be dealt with in more detail in the section that follows.

Man-made forests

The planting of forest trees has been a long established practice, resorted to in order to supplement, or substitute for, natural regeneration, and to extend, or create, production or protection forests. Planting has also been used in order to replace with different species existing forest resources which were poor in content or structure.

The greater part of the planting effort to date has been what might be termed conventional afforestation - with the species and management systems determined by the characteristics and limitations of the environment. More recently attention has been given to more intensive afforestation, with measures such as soil working, application of fertilizer, and irrigation used to adapt the environment to higher yielding species. This has been further intensified by introducing methods of accelerated cultivation - such as the use of carefully selected large; dimension growing stock, and tree breeding to improve the stock. The yields obtained from the more intensive forms of plantation forestry can be very high. In the. conditions to which they are suited eucalyptus grown to pole size produce an annual average per hectare of 20 to 30 cubic meters in Latin America and 15 to 25 cubic meters in tropical Africa. For the quicker growing pines, grown to sawlog size, a representative annual figure per hectare would be between 12 and 17 cubic meters. In consequence, fuelwood and polewood can be produced in less than 10 years, pulpwood at about. 10 years of age, and sawlogs of acceptable size from the age of 15 onward.

Quantitatively most of recorded past planting reported in Table III-3 has been in the countries of the north temperate zone and much if not most of it has been conventional afforestation. However, although undertaken to regenerate or extend essentially the type of forest native to the regions concerned, there has been a pronounced tendency within this framework to replace broadleaved species with coniferous species and in this manner to enhance the commercial usefulness of the forest. Thus the share of coniferous species in the growing stock of the Federal Republic of Germany has been increased from 30 percent at the beginning of the century to 70 percent in 1960. Most of the planting in the United Kingdom, which has been building up a forest estate by planting, has been with conifers, mainly exotic conifers.

TABLE III-3. - FOREST PLANTING BY REGION OR COUNTRY

Region	Area planted to 1963	Planting plans² 1963 to 1967	Principal species planted
	1 000 hectares
EUROPE.	35 700	2 028
Northern Europe.	..	190	Picea excelsa, Pinus silvestris
United Kingdom and Ireland.	..	164	Picea sitchensis, Pinus silvestris, Picea excelsa.
EEC.	..	408	Picea excelsa, Pinus pinaster, Populus x euramericana.
Southern Europe.	..	635	Eucalyptus spp., Pinus spp., Populus spp.
Central Europe.	..	13	Pinus spp., Picea excelsa, Populus x euramericana.
Eastern Europe.	..	618	Picea excelsa, Pinus silvestris, Populus spp.
USSR.	411 100	..	Pinus spp., Picea spp., Larix spp., Abies spp.,
			Betula verrucosa, onerous spp., Acer spp.,
			Populus spp., Salix spp., Alnus spp.
UNITED STATES.	59 000	62 100	Pinus spp., Pseudotsuga menziesii, Chamaecyparis lawsoniana, Juniperus spp., Populus spp., Acer negundo.
JAPAN.	7 000	250	Cryptomeria japonica, Chamaecyparis obtusa, Larix leptolepis, Pinus densiflora.
NEAR EAST.	150	50	Populus spp., Eucalyptus spp., Pinus spp.
AFRICA			Eucalyptus spp., Pinus spp., Acacia mollissima, Cupressus spp.
South Africa.	1 274	192
Madagascar.	165	237
Swaziland.	153	..
Morocco.	150	85
Equatorial East Africa 7.	137	6
Southern Rhodesia, Zambia and
Malawi.	120	30
Rwanda and Burundi.	67	..
Other countries.	..	8 27
LATIN AMERICA			Eucalyptus spp., Pinus spp., Populus spp., Salix spp., Araucaria angustifolia.
Brazil.	700	..
Chile.	350	100
Argentina.	260	50
Uruguay.	140	20
Cuba.	106	182
Mexico.	50	..
Guatemala.	22	94
Other countries.	22	9146
FAR EAST (excl. Japan)			Tectona grandis, Acacia mollissima, Pinus merkusii.
Indonesia.	900	250
Burma.	450	..
Philippines.	200	60
Other countries.	100	10106
PACIFIC.			Pinus radiata, Pseudotsuga menziesii, Araucaria spp.
New Zealand.	665	36
Australia.	200	60
CHINA (MAINLAND).	1130-60 000	..	Pinus spp., Larix spp., Populus spp., Eucalyptus spp., Cunninghamia lanceolata.

¹ Refers mainly to areas planted outside the boundaries of the natural forest, unless otherwise stated. - ² Best available data on planned increases in forest area through afforestation as reported in the FAO world forest inventory 1963 or as stated in national reports. - ³ Area planted 1947 - 63. Not all countries are included. Excluded from this figure GNP the considerable areas which have been planted within the boundaries of the natural forest in this region. - ⁴ Planned total planted area by the end of 1966. - ⁵ Area planted by the end of 1964. ⁶ Planting expected eventually on eligible agricultural lands under the Federal Conservation Reserve Program. - ⁷ Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. - ⁸ Includes Senegal 10,000 ha, Nigeria 13,000 ha, Togo 2,000 ha, and Mauritius 2,000 ha. - ⁹ Planting plans to 1967 for other Latin American countries include British Honduras 4,000 ha, Honduras 10,000 ha, Ecuador 32,000 ha, Surinam 5,000 ha, Bolivia 70,000 he, and Peru 25,000 ha. - ¹⁰ Planting plans to 1967 for other countries in the Far East include Thailand 10,000 ha, Sabah 65,000 ha, Papua and New Guinea 4,000 ha, Ceylon 1,000 ha, Nepal 2,000 ha, Pakistan 20,000 ha, and Hong Kong 4,000 ha. - ¹¹ Range of reported figures of area planted between 1950 and 1962.

More recently planting in the temperate zone seems to have been more closely directed toward obtaining high yields. In Europe the greater part of the planting is now in the warmer southern part of the region, much of it with fast-growing poplars. In Italy, for example, though making up only about 6 percent of the forest area of the country, poplar already provides 40 percent of the country's output of industrial wood. In the United States planting is also in the warm humid south, using fast-growing pines. Recently, additional impetus has been given to tree planting in both the United States and in western Europe by the retirement of cropland as agricultural productivity rises. Not only has this development released land for forestry, but much of it is land of a higher potential productivity than most of the land previously available for tree growing. In Japan planting is directed principally at replacing overmature and coppice forests with high-yielding species, principally coniferous. Plans exist to extend the plantations from 30 percent of the forest area at present to 40 percent in 1975.

As has been noted earlier, plantations become critically important in the areas to the south of the north temperate zone which are poorly endowed with commercially usable forests. In most countries of the Near East, for example, plantations provide most of what little industrial wood is produced domestically.

By far the largest planting effort mounted in the wood-poor zone - or anywhere else in the world for that matter-is in China (Mainland). The country's plans call for 100 million hectares to be planted between 1956 and 1967. Reports of the area actually planted during the 1950s range from 30 to 60 million hectares. But it is also reported that survival rates tended to be very low. It is therefore not possible to say what effective area of plantations exists in that country. Clearly, however, as the planting effort becomes effective, it will, if continued at the planned levels, in due course transform the wood supply situation in the country.

Planting has also been important in the more temperate countries to the south of the tropics. In New Zealand, southern Africa and Chile plantations already provide the greater part of the national output of industrial wood, supporting important sawmilling and pulp and paper industries. These areas were not without natural forests, but these were either unfavorably located or composed of species or sizes of little commercial use. In all three the industrial plantations are principally made up of fast-growing pines, which also form an important part of the plantations found elsewhere in the appropriate latitudes and altitudes in Australasia, in eastern Africa and in the southern part of Latin America. Eucalypts are even more widely used. There are by now about 2 million hectares of eucalypt plantations established in the world, principally in Latin America (about 900,000 hectares) and Africa (nearly 600,000 hectares).

Of the tropical species, easily the most important to have been established in plantations to date is teak. There are now about 1 million hectares of teak plantations, mainly in Indonesia and Burma, as well as in smaller areas in a number of other tropical countries. Whereas the fast-growing pines, eucalypts and poplars tend to be grown to provide fuelwood, poles, pulpwood and utility grades of sawnwood, teak is a high quality timber. Plantations of other tropical hardwoods in demand for peeling and sawing are also beginning to be established, in order to ensure future supplies.

Man-made forests consequently form an important part of the world's productive forest resource, making a contribution proportionately very much larger than their share of the world's area of forests. Furthermore their importance: extends to more than just the magnitude of the volume of wood they contribute. The very high yields obtained mean that production of wood can be concentrated, so reducing harvesting and transportation costs. The uniform size and homogeneous properties of plantation wood also contribute to cost saving. Furthermore the degree of control exercised over the more intensive forms of plantation forestry means that the stock can often be selected to provide the characteristics desired by the user. In addition, the high rates of turnover improve the prospects of getting acceptable financial returns on the investment involved, and, as a commercially competitive crop even on some agricultural sites, high-yield plantations can be sited with more flexibility and respect to the location of the outlets for the wood than is the case with natural forest.

But there are limitations. Large areas of a single species are particularly susceptible to epidemic attacks from insects and diseases, and the further one moves away from natural growing conditions, the more a species is prone to adverse effects, not only from biotic agencies, but from the climate and the other elements of the environment. Intensive afforestation requires good land, high-quality stock and care prior to, during and after establishment. A weakness in one link in this chain may cause a failure of the entire system, or at least a considerable reduction in the high yields possible. And high yields are essential if the high cost entailed is to be justified. In addition, little success has been achieved yet in finding successful, commercially useful species for some of the areas most in need of additional supplies of wood - for example, the dry savanna areas (nor has there been much success yet in growing conifers in the humid tropics). Again, some of the species which grow best have proved to be of little industrial use. However, within these limitations the importance of man-made forestry is clearly growing. The plantation plans reproduced in Table III-3 indicate that most countries intend them to make an even larger contribution in the future.

Removals of roundwood

The pattern of removals
Trends in removals

It is estimated that in 1960-62 about 2,130 million cubic meters of roundwood were removed annually in the world.² Not all of this volume came from the forests; in some countries trees outside the forest contributed important volumes, but on a global level, and in fact within each region, by far the greatest part of all removals did come from the forests. It should be kept in mind that the statistics refer to removals, which differ from fellings (which constitute the actual cutting drain upon the forest) by the amount of losses and waste in logging and transportation.

² As was noted at the beginning of Chapter II, in some parts of the world there is some unrecorded production of wood. An attempt has been made in this paper to estimate this unrecorded output for 1960-62, in order to show total removals and their pattern for that period. But the series of recorded statistics have had to form the basis for the analysis of trends in production. Reference to Annex Table III-B shows that there is seemingly little unrecorded production of industrial wood, but large unrecorded quantities of fuelwood removals in parts of Asia, and to a lesser extent in Africa.

The pattern of removals

Of the estimated 2,130 million cubic meters of roundwood removed in 1961,³ roughly half was classed as fuelwood (1,090 million cubic meters) and half was roundwood for industrial purposes (1,040 million cubic meters). The breakdown between wood of coniferous and broadleaved species was also very roughly even: 1,200 million cubic meters of broadleaved wood removals and 930 million cubic meters of coniferous wood. But more than four fifths of the coniferous wood was cut for industrial use while more than three quarters of the broadleaved wood was cut as fuelwood.

³ Throughout the study the data shown for 1951, 1956 and 1961 are annual averages for the periods 1950-52 1955-57, and 1960-62, unless otherwise stated.

This sharp divergence in the way the two species groups are used is largely explained by the different utilization patterns and the different forest endowment of the various parts of the world. In 1960-62, 85 percent of the world removals of industrial wood took place in the countries of the conifer-rich north temperate regions, and 75 percent of the removals of fuelwood in Latin America, Africa and Asia (excluding Japan), which lie largely in the tropical and subtropical zones where the forests are predominantly broadleaved. To put it another way, the greater part of the wood cut in the more developed countries is industrial wood, but most of the wood removed in developing countries is fuelwood. (See Table III-4 and Annex Table III-B.)

But this differential usage of the species also reflects the more favorable properties of coniferous wood, given the present state of wood-using technologies, which were referred to earlier. It is noticeable for example, that about 40 percent of the industrial wood cut in Latin America is coniferous wood even though coniferous species account for only a very small fraction of the total growing stock of the region. Similarly, broadleaved woods made up only 17 percent of the industrial wood removals of North America in 1961, a share that falls far short of the share this species group occupies in the region's growing stock volume. Even in Europe, where the forests are more intensively used, relatively much less use is made industrially of the broadleaved component of the growing stock than of the coniferous woods (though the heavy cut of broadleaved fuelwood tends to rectify this imbalance in total removals).

Trends in removals

The world's recorded annual roundwood removals rose from 1,670 million cubic meters in 1950-52 to 1,820 million in 1955-57, and 1,900 million in 1960-62; in 1963 they reached 1,920 million.

TABLE III-4. ESTIMATED TOTAL ANNUAL REMOVALS OF ROUNDWOOD, 1960-62¹

¹ See also Annex Table III-B. - ² Sawlogs, veneer logs and logs for sleepers.

At this global level virtually the whole of the growth was due to the rise in removals of industrial wood from 810 million cubic meters in 1951 to 1,020 million in 1961, a growth of 26 percent over the period. In contrast, recorded fuelwood removals stayed little changed at rather less than 900 million cubic meters a year. But, as is shown in Table III-5 and Annex Table III-B, there were marked falls in removals of fuelwood in the developed regions and rises elsewhere. As has been pointed out in Chapter II, the statistics on fuelwood production are subject to wide margins of error, and the magnitude of the respective declines and rises must remain in question. But the direction of the trends in fuelwood production in the different regions is certainly as indicated in Table III-5, and reflects the shift away from wood as a fuel which was discussed in Chapter II.

As is shown in Tables III-5 and III-6, the greater part of the growth in removals of industrial wood during the period 1951-61 occurred in the regions of the north temperate zone. Furthermore, removals tended to grow faster in these areas than elsewhere in the world.

This rapid growth was largely due to the speed with which output of pulpwood grew (it should be noted in interpreting Table III-6 that production of pitprops declined in both Europe and the United States, so that output of pulpwood grew by an even larger margin than is indicated in the table). Though everywhere logs (sawlogs, veneer logs and logs for sleepers) still make up the greater part of the industrial wood cut, in both Europe and North America pulpwood accounted for about half the growth in removals between 1951 and 1961.

TABLE III-5. - GROWTH IN RECORDED REMOVALS OF ROUNDWOOD, 1950-52 TO 1963¹

¹ See also Annex Table III-B.

The growth in this category means that a larger share of the harvest is being taken in smaller wood sizes (though this is partly offset by the declining share of poles, posts and fuelwood in the output). This has both contributed to, and been a result of, a more intensive utilization of the forest's yield, and has been particularly important where, as in most of Europe, much of any additional output has had to come from more intensive use. Also important in this sense has been the rising share of broadleaved species in the cut of industrial wood in the areas of mixed forest where, as has been noted earlier, these species tend to be less intensively used than the coniferous species. This shift in species use was particularly marked in Europe and Japan where much of the additional cut of both log and pulpwood sizes was broadleaved wood. More broadleaved pulpwood was also being cut in North America and the U.S.S.R., reflecting the pressures to utilize the more favorably located forest areas more intensively even though in these regions there still remains considerable scope for expanding output by bringing new forest areas into use.⁴

⁴ This is discussed in more detail in Chapter VI.

In the tropical and subtropical forest areas the greater part of such growth in industrial wood removals as did take place occurred in western Africa and insular southeast Asia. In both areas the growth supported a fast-growing export trade, which has involved very large quantities - as is shown by the figures below:

	Production of logs,		Percentage exported
	(1000 m³)
	1955-57	1963	1903
Western Africa	6 817	8 447	61
Insular southeast Asia	9 862	17 373	61

Latin America did not share in the export-based growth in output of tropical hardwoods. Nor did output of industrial wood for domestic use rise very much in Latin America,⁵ or in Africa or Asia. However, production of fuelwood appears to have risen over much of these three tropical regions.

⁵ In fact, the recorded statistics show a large fall in output in Brazil. But there is reason to believe that the coverage of the figures for 1955-57 and 1963 was different. It is considered unlikely that the actual decline in production was as large as is shown.

Output of industrial wood, most of it coniferous wood, rose sharply in some parts of the temperate regions to the south of the tropics, notably in southern Africa and New Zealand. These rises in output were of particular significance because of the extent to which they were based upon output from man-made forests. By 1961 nearly all of southern Africa's and about three quarters of New Zealand's by now sizable outputs were drawn from plantations. Some idea of the fast-growing importance of plantations as a source of wood in other parts of the world has already been given earlier in the chapter.

TABLE III-6. - GROWTH IN RECORDED REMOVALS IN INDUSTRIAL WOOD IN THE PRINCIPAL PRODUCING AREAS, 1950-52 TO 1960-62

¹ Sawlogs, veneer logs and logs for sleepers. - ² Change from 1953 to 1961.

Factors affecting the wood-producing potential of the forests

Nonproductive forms of wood drain
Competing uses of forest land
The status of the forests and forest lands
The institutional setting

A wide variety of factors, in addition to the site, growing stock and location aspects already reviewed, affect the capacity of the forest to produce wood for use.

Principal among them are:

(a) nonproductive drain from the forest in the form of losses from fire, insects, disease and the weather;

(b) the competing demands of other forms of land-use and other uses of forest land, notably permanent agriculture, shifting cultivation, grazing, recreation and soil and water conservation;

(c) the status of the forest land,. i.e., whether or not it is reserved or otherwise protected or under management, and the extent to which it has been made economically accessible;

(d) the institutional factors, such as the form of ownership, which affect the degree of control which can be exercised over forest utilization.

What follows is a brief survey of the broad orders of magnitude of the effect of these factors on actual or prospective wood production in different parts of the world, and an appraisal of their probable evolution.

Nonproductive forms of wood drain

The losses from fire, insect attack and disease, and storms, drought, ice and snow are immense. But it must be recognized that a large part of the loss is a normal part of the death and decay of overmature timber if it is not cut. Losses only become important to the wood-producing potential when they occur in forests which have been or are about to be brought into productive use, or if they cause permanent deterioration or destruction of the forest cover.

In fact, as use of the temperate forests has extended, intensified prevention of and control over losses other than those caused by the weather has greatly improved. In Europe, damage to forests from all causes was estimated to have been only about 10 million cubic meters in 1963, with only a small percentage caused by fire, insects or disease. In the United States in recent years losses from all causes amounted to about 160 million cubic meters a year, equivalent to roughly one third of total net growth. Greatest loss was caused by weather, followed by insects, disease and unknown causes. Because forest fire protection has been reasonably well developed, losses from fire accounted for only 6 percent of total losses. But much of this loss was in forests which are still economically inaccessible and, as most of the area regenerated to forest, the productive potential of the forest was not reduced by anything like the volumes represented by these figures. Indeed, fire sometimes helps to replace decrepit forests with young vigorous ones. Furthermore, much of the wood of commercial sizes and grades in trees which are killed on economically accessible and operated areas is usually salvaged.

Fire becomes a much more destructive factor in the drier parts of the world. Thus in Africa repeated burning, either to encourage the more palatable forms of vegetation for grazing cattle or to clear land for cultivation, has been an important factor in the unfavorable change of the high forest of western Africa to savanna, and of the encroachment of the desert south of the Sahara into the savanna - an encroachment which is taking place at a rate of from 1.5 to 30 kilometers every 10 years. Similar effects are to be found in Latin America and parts of Asia. With populations who depend on these systems of agriculture still growing, these practices and this form of drain upon the forest show little sign of abatement.

Insects and diseases tend to become important in forests made up wholly or largely of a single species, a condition which facilitates the build-up of an outbreak to epidemic proportions. As has been noted already, this is one danger that accompanies the growing establishment of single-species plantations.

Competing uses of forest land

A distinction can be made between the uses of forest land, such as protection, water control, recreation and tourism, which make use of the forest cover, and those, such as its use for cultivation of most agricultural crops, which entail the removal of the trees. The first uses are functions of the forest, the second involve a reduction in the forest cover.

PROTECTIVE LAND COVER

Forests have long had an important role as a protective land cover, both as a direct means of protecting the soil against erosion and of controlling water runoff. This important function is not necessarily to the exclusion of wood production, but does limit output -both because of the need to maintain the vegetative cover at all times, and because of the characteristics of the type of forest often appropriate to protection. Thus, when seeking to maximize the supply of water in semiarid areas, the most appropriate cover is frequently open forest stands in association with herbaceous vegetation, a type of cover which protects the soil while entailing less evapotranspiration. Such stands obviously yield little in the -way of timber. Similarly, the concern of some countries, particularly those in central Europe, to return to more stable types of forest formation, less exhausting for the soil and less susceptible to attack by pests and fire, could result in appreciable reductions in output of coniferous wood because they require a heavy admixture of broadleaved trees.

It is difficult to put a quantitative measure to the restrictions in output that come about in this way. As is shown in Annex Table III-A very large areas of forests are reserved for protective purposes. But, on the other hand, much of the afforestation which has been undertaken in the world is partly, if not wholly, to provide soil and water conservation, and the forests so created in due course also contribute to wood production. This is the case, for example, with critical areas planted in the 19th century in the Alps for torrent control, and in France for dune fixation.

If anything, the need for protective forests is even greater in the drier and monsoon parts of the world. There is, for example, a need for tree cover to check the southward advance of the Sahara desert in Africa; and to prevent flooding while benefiting irrigation, power generation and river navigation in the areas of monsoon climate in Asia. Growing awareness of this need could well lead to protective afforestation on a scale which would in due course make an important contribution to wood supplies in areas which at present are often poorly endowed with domestic supplies of wood.

RECREATION AND TOURISM

The use of forests as areas of recreation and tourism is also growing fast. In recent years there has been a rapid growth in the demand for outdoor recreation in the high-income urbanized countries. In the United States, for example, the number of visitors to national forests has been rising by 10 percent each year. The number of visits to the national forests of the northern and intermountain regions alone rose from 3 million in 1940 to 20 million in 1959; such visits are projected to reach 60 million by 1976.

Forests are favored as recreation areas. It is to be expected, therefore, that this rapid growth will lead to much larger areas being set aside as parks within which there will be felling restrictions in order to preserve amenity value. Again it is hard to say what this will mean in terms of wood production foregone. A recent study in California indicated that recreation use on several national forest areas could be increased tenfold with only a 13 percent reduction in timber production. But in the more densely visited and more widely penetrated areas set aside for recreation, felling restrictions are sure to be more severe.

The use of forest land for recreation is at present most important, in terms of the areas of forest affected, in the more highly urbanized and high-income countries. But it also extends into other parts of the world with actual or potential tourist appeal. In Kenya tourism, which is very largely based upon wildlife living in a forest habitat, already ranks second, behind agriculture, as a revenue earner, and is expected to have a large growth potential-if the wildlife and its habitat are preserved and maintained.

AGRICULTURE

As factors acting to reduce the wood-productive area of forest land in the world recreation and tourism and the protective functions of the forest are certainly much less important than the expansion of the area of agriculture. But the situation with respect to the interaction of forestry and agriculture is sharply different in the temperate and tropical areas.

In the agriculturally more advanced countries of North America and western Europe, productivity in agriculture has risen so far and fast as to call for a reduction in the area under crops. Large areas of the land so withdrawn have already reverted naturally to forest or have been planted with trees. In the United States, there was a net addition of about 3.2 million hectares to the forest area in the decade to 1963, and of 10.0 million hectares in the previous decade. It is expected that by 1980 about 20 million hectares of cropland in the United States will have been withdrawn from use and that a considerable part will be put under trees. In Europe about 10 million hectares of cropland are likely to be withdrawn from use by 1975. It is estimated that, even by 1961, about 2 million hectares in northwestern Europe and 1.5 million hectares in southern Europe were available for tree growth.

The picture in these regions is therefore one of a contracting agricultural acreage and an extension of the area under trees. In most of Africa, Asia and Latin America, on the other hand, increases in agricultural production over the years have been accomplished more by expanding the areas cultivated than by raising productivity in the areas already under cultivation. Although important areas not formerly cultivated have been gained for agriculture through irrigation and other techniques, much of the expansion has been made at the expense of the forests. In addition, in most parts of the humid tropics, and also on large areas in the semihumid and semiarid tropics, a relatively important part of the rural population derives its living from shifting cultivation on forest lands.

It is estimated that in Africa south of the Sahara, where shifting cultivation is by far the commonest type of agriculture, the area of closed high tropical forest has shrunk by at least 100 million hectares from its original extent, mainly due to the spread of this form of cultivation. And with the populations involved growing at a rapid rate, shifting agriculture is still spreading at a fairly fast rate. In the Ivory Coast, for instance, it has been estimated that each additional cultivator clears an average of 4 hectares of forest in the course of his working life, destroying in the process a volume of wood several times larger than the quantity which he and his dependents are likely to consume during their lifetime.

An idea of the importance of shifting cultivation in the Far East can be got from Table III-7. Again the area so cultivated, or transferred to permanent agriculture, is still spreading. In the Philippines, for instance, it is expected that about 3.5 million hectares of forest land (2 million hectares of it commercial forest) will be lost to agriculture in the 10 years to 1975. In Indonesia it is planned that 780,000 hectares of forest will be converted to permanent agriculture in the seven years to 1972, and a further 480,000 hectares put under shifting cultivation between 1962 and 1967.

In Latin America it is estimated that at present 5 to 10 million hectares of forest land are cleared annually for agriculture.

TABLE III - 7. - SHIFTING CULTIVATION IN THE FAN EAST (ESTIMATED)

	Number of shifting cultivators	Forest cleared annually	Total forest area under shifting cultivations
	Millions	Million hectares
Continental southeast Asia	7	2	26
Insular southeast Asia	6	2	20
South Asia	10	4	52
East Asia	1.5	0.5	5
TOTAL	24.5	8.5	103

SOURCE: UNITED NATIONS/FAO, Timber trends and prospects in the Asia-Pacific region.

Shifting cultivation

Shifting cultivation involves felling and burning a small area of virgin forest or the bush or secondary forest which has replaced it through centuries of this practice. The cleared area is then cultivated for one or two years, using up what fertility has been accumulated in the soil over the period of " forest fallow." The land is then abandoned and returns to forest or brush, where it remains until the next cultivation can be undertaken.

In its traditional form, and provided rotations are long enough, shifting cultivation can maintain reasonably well the stability and fertility of the soil. But this form of cultivation usually takes up much more land than growing of crops under permanent agriculture and, of course, little or no production of industrial wood may be expected from the area involved.

Indeed the lands subjected to this type of agriculture should probably not be classed as forests; they are agricultural lands. Moreover, because of the nature of tropical soils and climatic conditions, this system seems to be the only economic way of conserving the productivity of the land at the present stage of development of the communities engaged in this traditional form of agriculture. In due course it is to be expected that appropriate systems of permanent agriculture will be introduced, but for a long time shifting cultivation must remain the predominant agricultural form in these areas.

In fact, with the rapid increases in the size of the rural populations involved, the area of shifting cultivation will certainly grow, and is growing at the present time. The people who practice this form of agriculture can meet their growing requirements only by extending cultivation onto additional areas of forest, or by shortening the period of forest fallow, which would be likely to endanger the stability of the soil. In either case the present or the future wood-producing potential of the forest will be affected.

Permanent agriculture

Much of the transfer to permanent agriculture of forest land is a rational shift in land-use patterns to make more productive use of these lands as populations and demands for food increase. Furthermore, opening up of an area for agriculture can make more of the surrounding forest lands accessible for timber harvesting. Much of the wood on land to be alienated to agriculture is used rather than destroyed. But much of even colonization for permanent agriculture is indiscriminate, destructive of the wood it displaces or an ill-advised use of the land. It is merely a process of trial and error. Very often the chosen forest land cannot support permanent agriculture. When soil fertility is lost, cultivation is abandoned and the land is often grazed. The bare soil will frequently return to forest, unless, as is often the case, it is first destroyed by erosion. This process is, in fact, a harmful form of shifting cultivation - harmful because it involves no fallow period; use of each area is pursued to the point where the soil is exhausted. This indiscriminate encroachment on the forest by an inappropriate use of the land is merely " buying time " against the land hunger problem which must be solved rather through agrarian reform and informed land-use policy. In many cases it appears difficult to take the logical steps forward, and until appropriate action occurs very large areas of forest land will continue to be removed.

The most serious effect of these primitive forms of agriculture must be the deterioration of the land that they bring about, which adversely affects its capacity to produce wood, or any other crop, in the future. But the immediate loss in terms of wood is also considerable. In Senegal the annual losses due to fire and shifting cultivation have been estimated at 4 million cubic meters, which is much more than the country's annual cut for fuelwood and other productive uses. In the Philippines, it was found in one large forest area that land clearing and other unregulated forms of drain were drawing off more than 15 million cubic meters of wood a year, three times as much as the annual logging offtake. On balance it is clear that for the foreseeable future agriculture will continue to cut heavily into tropical and subtropical forests.

Grazing

Another activity of traditional forms of agriculture which can be highly detrimental to, if not destructive of, the forest is grazing. Grazing can in fact be carried out in conjunction with productive forestry but, if excessive, it affects the condition and reproduction of the forests. Its detrimental effects are therefore more often those of loss of increment and quality than outright destruction of the trees. Grazing pressures are highest in the tropical moist deciduous and dry forest types, where the ground and herbaceous vegetation provides more plentiful grazing fodder. In India alone, a large proportion of the country's 280 million head of cattle graze on 35 million hectares of forest land. The grazing pressure is, of course, greatest near the villages, where forests may be completely destroyed. In many areas, goats have been instrumental in the final phases of forest destruction.

Despite the damage done to forests, grazing is probe. ably unavoidable under present agricultural systems; during the dry seasons in some parts of the world, livestock would probably die of starvation were it not for forest grasses and other vegetation. Again it must be recognized that, for a long time to come in densely populated areas, forest management will be difficult because it involves finding the balance between the needs of this necessary animal product and the need for wood. Unfortunately, it is also the drier parts of the world, where grazing is most prevalent, that are most severely lacking in supplies of wood.

Large areas of forest land will necessarily be devoted principally to grazing. However, it is of note that in some countries of the Mediterranean area, where grazing has severely curtailed productive forestry in the past, an improvement in agricultural practices in recent years has been accompanied by a sharp reduction in, and even an elimination of, grazing in the forest.

In summary, it can be said of the impact of competing uses of forest land upon the capacity to produce wood that in the more advanced countries of the north temperate zone the area of forest is in fact growing as agriculture becomes more concentrated, but other uses of land under forest are becoming more important. Though in large part complementary to the production of wood their growth in importance is having an increasingly curtailing effect upon the latter. Also important in these countries, because it tends to encroach upon readily accessible and productive forest land, is the spread of urban areas, road building, reservoirs, rights of way for overhead power lines, and other lesser uses of land associated with the development of advanced, urbanized countries.

In the tropical and dry forest areas, on the other hand, agricultural uses of forest land are displacing productive forest on a massive scale, often forming a wood drain in excess of that resulting from utilization of the forest. The rapid growth in the size of the populations engaged in and dependent upon these forms of agriculture points to further encroachment upon the forest on an even larger scale in the future.

The status of the forests and forest lands

The magnitude of the impact of the different factors discussed above will largely depend upon the degree of control exercised over the forest. The present section therefore briefly considers the extent and effectiveness of the reservation of land for forestry, the extent to which the forests have been made economically accessible and the extent and effectiveness of the management to which they are subjected.

RESERVATION

In most of Africa, Asia and Latin America the principal concern is still to reserve the land which should be devoted to forestry - in the face of the claims and pressures of agricultural expansion, and legal or political checks involving rights of ownership or usage. In countries where there is generally a shortage of personnel, the problem is as much to put reserving legislation into effect - to demarcate and effectively control usage in the reserved areas - as to get the legislation effected.

Reservation usually involves transference of the land to the State's domain. But this is not always so. In Africa, for instance, it has been found to be often more appropriate for reservation to extend only to imposing a degree of restraint on rights of usage. Also, in both Africa and Asia, some parts of the forests reserves are set aside as village forests, communal forest areas and native authority forests in order to meet the needs of local communities, which are made responsible for their management under the supervision of the State.

Annex Table III-A gives an idea of the extent to which the forests of different regions are reserved. Although large areas have been set aside for forestry in many countries in recent years, the area reserved in Africa, Asia and Latin America is still only a small part of the total area of forest land of the three regions. Nor in most countries is it intended that anything like the present area of forest be permanently set aside for that purpose. As has been noted above, it is both unavoidable and necessary that the area of agriculture continues to expand for many years to come, and the area permanently devoted to forestry in much of the tropics will therefore be much smaller than at present. The data in Table III-8 indicate for a number of countries recent plans for eventually increasing the permanent forest estate. But the present inroads into even the reserved areas, not only through illegal felling and cultivation but also through de-reservation, cast doubt upon the long-term wood-producing potential of much of the tropical high forest areas, and also underline the fact that the present problem is to secure effectively an adequate forest estate.

Most of the developed countries on the other hand have long passed the stage of reservation. Although, as has been seen, the area of forests is subject to gains and losses, these are comparatively minor: essentially the forest area is stable and effectively reserved for productive, protective and recreational purposes. Attention in these countries is now directed to bringing it more fully into use and under management.

ECONOMIC ACCESSIBILITY

Most of the forest area of Europe and much of the area in North America, the U.S.S.R. and Japan has by now been made economically accessible. But economic accessibility is always relative. Rising forest product prices or decreased harvesting, transportation or utilization costs can make accessible forests which were previously out of reach. Conversely, falling product prices or rising costs can reduce economic accessibility. An important factor in many European countries in recent years has been the exodus of rural populations, which has reduced the supply of forest labor. This has aggravated the pressures of rising wages which have pressed heavily upon forest and harvesting operations - which have tended to remain persistently labor-intensive - in most high-income countries. In these countries the question of economic accessibility has consequently come to depend largely upon ability to improve productivity in logging and transportation.

But there remain very large areas where accessibility is first and foremost a question of providing a transportation network. In the U.S.S.R. heavy investments are being made in the infrastructure necessary to open up immense forests in the north and east of the country. In consequence, by 1975 a much larger share of the country's output will be coming from that area. The period to 1975 will also see a large additional area of forest in the west and north of Canada brought into use.

In Africa, Asia and Latin America, the need to extend the physical accessibility assumes even greater importance. The failure to use the huge forest resources of Latin America is largely explainable in terms of lack of access, both to the outside world and to the markets within the region. In the last few years, permanent roads have been extended at a rate of about 20,000 kilometers a year, so that the situation is slowly improving. In Africa, where the ready access of much of the forests underlay the rapid expansion in commercial output in recent years, there is now a need, as these forests become worked out, to extend the transportation network. In this connection development of the rich forest resources of Gabon and Cameroon is likely to be facilitated by the large north-south high ways which are planned in both countries. Table III-8 summarizes for selected countries recent plans for increasing the area of accessible forests.

TABLE III-8. - REPORTED PROGRESS IN FOREST RESERVATION, MANAGEMENT AND USE IN SELECTED COUNTRIES

Country	Areas reserved	Areas brought under management plane	Areas opened up
Chile	600,000 hectares were reserved between 1960 and 1964. The reservation of an additional 1.4 million hectares is planned.		30,000 hectares were opened up for exploitation between 1960 and 1964 as a result of improvements to the forest road network.
Colombia	52 million hectares were declared as forest re- serves by law in 1959.	Exploitation permits for an area of more than 100,000 hectares were issued to industrial enterprises in 1963 and 1964, raising the area under management plans to about 600,000 hectares.
Peru	5,800,000 hectares were reserved as permanent forests in 1962.	250,000 hectares are to be brought under management in the near future as a pilot project for eventually. bringing all national forests under planned management.	The accessible forest area increased by almost 800,000 hectares from 1960 to 1964 as a result of improvements in the transportation network. Plans exist for building 2,500 kilometers of road in the Amazon basin to make possible access to forests covering more than 5 million hectares.
Gabon	Areas reserved (mainly for the protection of young promising okoume stands) increased by 550,000 hectares between 1957 and 1962.		Roads to be built into the second forest zone will give access to stands capable of supporting an additional annual output of 200,000 tons of wood of commercial species and sizes for 20 years.
Ghana	180,000 hectares were demarcated as permanent forests between 1957 and 1962.	360,000 hectares were brought under management plans between 1957 and 1962.	400,000 hectares of forest are expected to be brought into use during the period 1960 to 1970.
Nigeria	900,000 hectares were demarcated as permanent forests between 1959 and 1964.	700,000 hectares were brought under management plans from 1959 to 1964.	3.5 million hectares of forests are expected to be brought into use from 1960 to 1970.
India	125,000 hectares were demarcated as permanent forests between 1960 and 1962. Reservation of an additional 2 million hectares is planned.	By 1959 50 percent of India's accessible forest was covered by working plans. A further 25 percent was brought under management between 1959 and 1964, and the rest is expected to be so covered in another 8-10 years.	800,000 hectares have been made accessible during regent years through improvements in the transportation network. Plans exist to more than double the present length of the forest road network by 1975.
Indonesia	550,000 hectares were reserved between 1962 and 1964. Plans exist to reserve as much as 25 million hectares more.	360,000 hectares were brought under planned management between 1962 and 1964.	Improvements to the transportation network gave access to 350,000 hectares of forest between 1962 and 1964. It is expected that a further 390,000 hectares will be opened up in the near future.
Philippines	900,000 hectares were demarcated as permanent forests between 1962 and 1964.	3 million hectares were brought under management between 1962 and 1964. It is intended to bring a further 2½ million hectares under management in the future.	Previously economically inaccessible areas are rapidly being opened up for exploitation because of rising timber prices and the availability of modern logging equipment.

SOURCES: National reports.

MANAGEMENT

Access to the forests is of course only one step in bringing them under effective management. Annex Table III-A records the reported data on the areas of forest under planned management. Planned forest management is slow to spread, and even in Europe only about half the forest area is under management. In many of the developed countries, an ownership pattern characterized by numerous forest owners holding small areas hats hindered the spread of more intensive management. In North America and the U.S.S.R. forest management is still as much concerned with bringing the still large areas of virgin or little used forest into use as with introducing more intensive systems of forest management to the areas already in use.

This applies equally to the large areas of old growth tropical forest. The greatly increased survey activity in the Far East, in most countries of Latin America and in parts of Africa is laying the ground for extending the area under management. But so far in Latin America and Africa management planning has made relatively little progress. In Asia, on the contrary, better progress is being made. Table III-8 sets out for a number of countries recent plans for bringing new areas under management.

But management plans have of course to be applied to have any effect, and such effect as they have will rest upon the measures they prescribe. This study is not the place to engage in an examination of silvicultural and management techniques. Here it will suffice to note two general features.

The first is that over much of the world, including most of the tropics and subtropics, the primary objective of management is still essentially to effect the elementary steps of securing the land which should be devoted to forestry and putting it under planned use to this end. The principal limiting factor is insufficient knowledge - of the extent, content and yield of the existing forests, of the relative suitability of forests and agriculture on different soils; and of the proper means of managing the complex tropical forests both to retain the fertility of the fragile soils of the areas concerned, and to improve their yield of sought-after species and sizes. Until more is known on all these counts it will not be possible to do more than guess at what the eventual contribution of the tropical forests could, or should, be to the world's supply of wood.

The second feature is that, at the other end of the scale, the rapidly intensifying and accelerating pressures on the forests in some of the high wood-use countries are presenting forest authorities with changes which challenge some of the earlier tenets of traditional forest management. There is, primarily, a growing appreciation that the forest can, and should, be used more fully. Better techniques of forest inventory, and a much expanded inventory effort, have in recent years greatly improved knowledge of the forests and of their capacity. One outcome has been to disclose that the forest growing stock and net increment in most countries are higher than previously assumed. In Europe during the 1950s estimates of net annual increment were revised upward by 30 to 40 million cubic meters, apparently mainly on the basis of new and improved information. There has also been an important upward revision following the most recent round of forest inventory work in the United States. At the same time, there is a growing awareness that allowable cuts should be set much closer to net annual increment. In effect, with the much closer control that can now be exercised over the forest there is no longer the need to hold back a " reserve " of growing stock against the eventuality of disastrous losses such as plagued the forest in earlier times.

Furthermore, management is faced with the shift in the pattern of demand. This raises such questions as whether, where appropriate, rotations should be shortened and greater emphasis given to the production of the smaller sizes of wood required for pulping.

Also, growing attention is being paid, as yet principally at the research stage, to the growing of wood better suited to the uses to which it will be put. Attention has already been drawn earlier in the chapter to the important progress that has been made in the field of forest genetics, in the selection of species, varieties and strains for planting, and the development of techniques for planting and care of plantations. Advances have also been made in the treatment of the natural forest. For instance, large-scale experiments conducted in Scandinavia have shown that fertilization treatment can stimulate growth for a certain period, giving increases in yield of 20 to 40 percent. Finally, in some countries more attention is being directed toward increasing total returns from all uses on a given forest area through co-ordinated use planning.

But these measures represent the situation in only the most advanced countries. Furthermore, even in these countries there is a wide gap between the development of new approaches and techniques and their application in practice. In part this is because it is not yet clear that the added costs of some of the specific measures of more intensive management will yield a sufficiently improved return. But it seems likely that, in the period to 1975, and beyond, there will be a more widespread and more rapid move toward adapting management to the changing tempo, pattern and magnitude of the demands being put upon the forest.

The institutional setting

In many countries much if not most of the forest land is owned or under the direct control of the State. In this case, a government may implement its forest policy directly, either through its administrative personnel or through control of the concessionnaires to whom harvesting of the forests is entrusted. But where, as in the United States, western Europe and Japan, much of the forest land is privately owned, control must largely be indirect.

Furthermore, the form of ownership directly affects the type and intensity of management sought and practiced. It is a feature of the forestry sector that much of the privately owned forest land is in the form of small holdings. As has been noted earlier a pattern of small ownership usually tends to hinder the spread of planned management of the forests. The small forest owner is ill-equipped to compete in the advanced high-wage countries where forest work is being progressively mechanized. His small size of operation will usually be insufficient to support the machinery involved, and he is seldom in the position to make appreciable investments in his forest, because of their lengthy gestation period and the low rate of return usually involved. It has consequently become increasingly difficult for the small owner to participate in progress in forest management, or indeed for him to manage to remain profitably in the business of producing wood at all.

To counter the disadvantages of small size there has been a widespread development of co-operatives and other forms of association between small owners. These organizations are generally assisted by the State, which provides technical and financial assistance and which may often make membership of such an organization a condition of its assistance to an owner. In North America and western Europe, for instance, help may take the form of subsidies, loans, tax exemptions and technical advice. Efforts are also being made to check the fragmentation of forests, which occurs as a result of the existing inheritance laws and customs, and to encourage mergers to form larger units. The implementation of forest policy in the countries where much of the forest is privately owned may require some restriction on the exercise of owner rights. In these cases the desired results are sought primarily through persuasion and through education of forest owners.

Co-operatives and technical and financial assistance are also being increasingly used in the developing countries, in particular in Asia and Latin America, to encourage the creation of farm and community wood-lots, to promote afforestation and reforestation, and in general to increase public awareness of the benefits to be derived from forests. In Africa, as has been noted earlier, forestry has been promoted at the community level by providing government supervision and assistance for community-controlled forests.

On forest land controlled by the State, application of forest policy is much more direct. However, this is also not without its difficulties. In many countries with extensive state forests, it has been common practice to entrust the harvesting and processing of wood to concessionaires, under the supervision of the state administration. But no set pattern has emerged as an ideal balance between the State's concern to secure good management and harvesting practices and the concessionaires concern to ensure the security of tenure and the supply of wood raw material necessary to justify the investment in the required plant, and terms which will leave him an acceptable return on that investment. In Canada, to take the market economy country with the largest area of state-owned forests as an example, a wide variety of different forms have evolved, though the trend has recently been toward concession terms which involve the concession holder in the management stage, and which encourage him to practice specified desired harvesting practices in order to enjoy more favorable terms.

In countries with centrally-planned economies, all activities, including industrial processing, tend to be state-controlled, though different stages of forest management and utilization tend to be carried out by separate state enterprises.

The one trend which can be seen in nearly every country is toward a greater degree of state participation in the forest sector. Underlying this is inter alia the growing importance of the protective and amenity functions of the forest, the control of which is a public rather than private concern, and the difficulty, given. the lengthy period involved in the production of wood, in securing from the private sector adequate investment in the forest to provide for future requirements. This trend can be expected to continue. As has been seen above, this does not necessarily mean increased state ownership or direct control of owner usage so much as increased use of the tools of subsidies, loans and tax concessions, and the provision of the necessary technical assistance to encourage desirable forest practices.

Prospects for the period up to 1975

Possibilities for increasing wood removals
Roundwood removals in 1975

The purpose of this section is to bring together the salient features of what has been written above about the world's forest resources, and to evaluate the prospects for increasing roundwood production in the period up to 1975. The final chapter of this study will take up the question of whether or not these prospective increases are likely to be adequate to meet the wood requirements expected to arise by 1975.

It is possible to discuss the forest productive potential of some parts of the world with greater confidence than others. Much more is known about the potential of the more heavily used forests in the Northern Hemisphere, and about some of the areas of forest to the south of the tropics, than about the vast areas of tropical forests. But it is clear that most of any additional wood that will be forthcoming in the period up to 1975 will come from these better known temperate forests. Not only are they more firmly under man's control, but investment capital, and the skill and knowledge needed to increase the accessibility of as yet untapped forests and to increase output from presently used forests are generally more readily available to mobilize the potential in the forested countries of the Northern Hemisphere. A much fuller use of the tropical forests still waits upon the prior solution of the problems of effectively defining and securing a forest estate in areas where land-use patterns are not yet settled and where use of the resource is largely uncontrolled; of giving access to the forests; of devising and effecting management systems appropriate to the conditions peculiar to the tropics; and of finding markets for what these forests grow.

This is not to say that these problems are unique to the tropical and subtropical regions. Viewing the world forest resource broadly, certain problems can be seen to face all countries in varying degrees. In the first place, the volume of growing stock and, more important, the rate of increment are nearly everywhere lower than those that could, and should, be obtained. In the second place, utilization practices are still very largely poor and wasteful: much of what grows is left unharvested; a part of what is harvested goes unutilized. In the third place, large areas of forests are worked principally, or exclusively, to meet immediate needs, with no, or insufficient, consideration given to the provision of future requirements.

Overlying these major problems and adding to the difficulties attending their ultimate solution is the general lack of reliable forest statistical information in many countries. Lack of inventory data, in particular, immediately limits the clarity with which the forest problems within a country or region can be viewed; until they can be defined, they cannot be solved.

Possibilities for increasing wood removals

Before turning to an area-by-area examination of the prospective increases that might be forthcoming, it will be convenient to review briefly the various measures which can be employed to raise production of roundwood. Broadly speaking they fall under two headings: increased offtake from the areas of forests already in use, and extending harvesting into hitherto unutilized forest areas.

Even in the north temperate forests there is considerable scope for stepping up offtake by taking more of the cut from neglected species and smaller wood sizes. There is even greater potential scope, and greater problems in the way of doing so, in the heterogeneous tropical rain forests. Essentially the problems are twofold: to create markets for the presently rejected species and grades, and to be able to harvest and process low quality and small-sized wood economically. Fuller utilization can also be obtained through reducing logging and transportation losses, damage and waste. In large parts of the world a substantial part of the volume felled is still lost in this way.

Over a longer period the increment of the forests may be raised, thus permitting a larger offtake. This may be brought about by more intensive manipulation of the basic forest growing stock - by thinning, site preparation, encouraging an increased proportion of the more valuable species, etc. - or by replacing the original growing stock with planted forests containing other species. But the process is expensive, imposing economic limitations on what can be done. It is also time-consuming, and may be either too slow in view of rapidly increasing wood needs, or too inflexible. Given the length of time needed to produce wood in most forested areas of the world, it is difficult to be sure that stands initiated now will in fact be producing what will be required one rotation-length hence. It is the additional flexibility in response to such changes in requirements and techniques that constitutes one of the principal advantages of the fast-growing plantation species which have come to the fore in recent years.

Roundwood removals in 1975

In the following section, the likely evolution of these different possible increases in output is briefly reviewed for each region, and estimates of the roundwood production in 1975 are set out for areas for which they are available.

Europe has little additional mature or overmature sawlog-sized coniferous wood still to be brought into industrial use, nor much additional pulpwood-sized coniferous wood. It has adequate reserves of sawlog-sized hardwoods, but little of it of high quality, and it has abundant supplies of small-sized broadleaved wood.

It is expected that growth in removals will consequently be achieved very largely by drawing upon broadleaved species and smaller roundwood sizes - reflecting the growing share of pulpwood that will be required in the cut, and the expanding use of broadleaved pulpwood. Because thinnings and other byproducts of sawlog stands will be insufficient to supply all the pulpwood required, it is probable that management of more of Europe's forests will call for shorter rotations to favor small roundwood as the final crop. As a result, there will very likely be an increase in the proportion of younger age classes. It is also expected that part of the projected increase in industrial wood removals will be transfer of small roundwood from fuelwood to industrial use.

It is expected that roundwood removals in the region will rise from 332 million cubic meters ® in 1961 to about 365 million in 1975; and that with the fuelwood cut declining, annual removals of industrial wood will rise by the larger margin of 48 million to 272 million cubic meters ® in 1975.

Whether this projected increase in removals can be achieved without increases in product prices will depend primarily upon costs and availability of labor: and labor is becoming more expensive and more difficult to recruit and retain. Furthermore, it is becoming increasingly difficult to substitute mechanical equipment for labor as ever smaller and poorer timber is worked.

The extent and rate of growth of removals from the forests of the U.S.S.R. will depend very much upon the rate at which the vast areas of virgin forests in the north and east are opened up. Total removals in 1961 were about 358 million cubic meters ®. However allowable cut in that year was reported to be almost 605 million cubic meters ®. Thus, there is actually being removed only about 60 percent of the wood which could be harvested at present if the necessary facilities were developed.

Of the 79,000 million cubic meters of growing stock reported in 1963, almost 75 percent is believed to be mature or overmature; and almost 85 percent is located in forests outside the forested areas of the European U.S.S.R. which are presently providing more than half of the country's wood output. In fact, removals are presently badly out of balance with forest resources. In 1963 the heavily populated and industrialized central regions, with about 5 percent of the resources, accounted for about 20 percent of industrial wood removals. In contrast, the far eastern region, with 16 percent of the forested area, accounted for only about 6 percent of removals, and eastern Siberia, with almost half of the total forest area in the U.S.S.R., accounted for only about 16 percent. It is to rectify this imbalance that the present massive investment in opening up the forests of the north and the east has been undertaken. It is apparently planned that between 1965 and 1970 removals are to be increased by about 1.4 percent in the European U.S.S.R. and by 17.2 percent in the Asian part of the country. If these plans materialize, removals in 1970 will amount to roughly 190 million cubic meters ® in the European part of the U.S.S.R. and some 200 million cubic meters ® in the Asian part; and of the total of about 390 million cubic meters ® some 310 million would be industrial wood.

Although progress in opening up these old-growth forest areas has been slow to date, it is clear that output in the U.S.S.R. will in the future increasingly come from mature forests considered exploitable and in need of cutting in order to improve the age class distribution and raise increment. The fact that there are apparently about 318 million hectares of such forests, carrying about 27,000 million cubic meters ® of wood, serves to underline the huge potential the country possesses. But the harvest which will be realized in 1975 will be largely determined by the extent to which the forests will be economically accessible by that year.

A sharp growth in roundwood removals is expected in the United States, with this growth likely to be accompanied by considerable changes in the pattern and structure of removals. In the first place, there is likely to be a gradual shift from old-growth forest to second-growth forest now once again carrying merchantable stands, a trend which will tend over the long term to shift the geographical weight of production back toward locations logged over during earlier eras. Depending on future size demands, some problem of quality may arise as the old-growth reserve diminishes. The proportion of the cut which is likely to be available in the larger roundwood sizes is expected to drop sharply in the eastern forests, and also in private forest lands in the west (though not in national forests in the west).

	1970	1980	2000
	Million m³ ®
Cut	326	388	612
Growth	493	516	487
Supply	516	533	510

SOURCE. Timber trends in the United States. Table 87, p. 162.

In fact, the harvestable resource is, as in Europe, increasingly in the form of smaller sizes and currently less favored species. The outlook for pulpwood production is consequently more favorable than the outlook for log production.

Removals are expected to grow from the 297 million cubic meters ® in 1961 to 352 million in 1975 (327 million of it industrial wood), and to about 612 million cubic meters ® in 2000. But, apparently, if removals are to rise to this level by the end of the century without depleting the growing stock, forest management programs will have to be sharply stepped up.⁶ Increases in removals of the magnitudes foreseen are also likely to require fuller utilization of the wood on the areas logged, both in terms of species and sizes.

⁶ The following table relative to the United States shows how supply (defined as growth in the east, allowable out on public lands in the west, and prospective- cut on private lands in the west) is projected to develop with recent levels of management, and its relationship to projected growth and cut.

Increased removals from Canada's forests are expected to come both from exploitation of forests not presently in use, in particular those in British Columbia, and also from a fuller use of the wood on the very large areas of forest already in use in an extensive fashion. As in the United States, there exists a well-developed road system into forests logged earlier, enabling economic cutting of residual and second-growth timber on logged-over areas.

It is estimated that there are in fact about 243 million hectares of forest, containing over 15,000 million cubic meters of timber, which are operable at 1960 costs and prices. The estimated annual allowable cut for this area, assuming a rotation to give a desirable mixture of sawlogs and pulpwood, amounts to about 211 million cubic meters ®. If prices were to rise by 10 percent, an additional allowable annual cut of about 26 million cubic meters could be taken from presently marginal forest lands; and if all lands operable at 1960 costs and prices were managed on shorter, pulpwood rotations, the annual allowable cut could probably be raised to 315 million cubic meters. In 1961 removals of industrial wood in Canada amounted to only 89 million cubic meters ® [and removals of fuelwood to 7 million cubic meters ®]. The country consequently has an immense unused reserve of wood already economically accessible. The actual cut in 1975 is therefore likely to be determined more by the size of the demand for Canadian wood in the world than by restrictions on the quantities economically available in that year. Therefore, consideration of what Canadian production might be in 1975 will have to be deferred to the final chapter.

Expectations of increased timber removals in Japan are based on the continued intensification of forest management on both public and private forest lands, and especially on a large-scale program for conversion of presently low yielding overmature high forests and coppice fuelwood forest to faster growing coniferous plantations. Planted forests, which presently cover about 30 percent of the total forest area, are expected to represent 40 percent of both area and growing stock by 1975. If planting and conversion rates are maintained, planted forests could account for 50 percent of the total forest area and 70 percent of the growing stock volume by the year 2000. Removals are expected to rise from 64 million cubic meters ® in 1961 to 81 million in 1975, of which 72 million would be industrial wood. As elsewhere in the industrially advanced, high-use countries, the rise in removals is likely to require a growing share of the cut being taken in hitherto neglected species and in smaller roundwood sizes.

In considering the developed countries of the north temperate zone as a whole, it is evident that removals are likely to rise by very substantial amounts, and that this rise will fall far short of exhausting the capacity of the temperate forests for sustained output of wood. But the potential is far from evenly spread. Many countries and areas are now largely limited in their increases in cut to what can be obtained from more intensive and efficient management, harvesting and utilization.

As will be clear from the earlier parts of the chapter, the immediate potential, in the period to 1975, of most other parts of the world is of a quite different magnitude and complexion. Some of the manifold difficulties associated with valorizing the forest wealth of the tropics have already been spelt out. There is as yet insufficient data on growing stock, increment, losses and removals to support any estimate of future removals from the tropical forests. Enough is known about them, however, to enable some conclusions to be drawn. But it should also be recognized that the low level of removals and processing is as much a reflection of low levels of effective demand for wood products, as it is of problems on the supply side.

Because of its inaccessibility, and composition, the tropical rain forest area of the Amazon basin is unlikely to contribute much more in the way of wood by 1975 than it does at present. The coniferous and non-rain broadleaved forests to its north and south within Latin America are likely to continue to be more important sources of wood supply. In addition the very large area of plantations in Latin America are expected to contribute fast-growing quantities of roundwood. The region's eucalyptus plantations alone were reported in 1961 to contain 97 million cubic meters ®, and to have an average annual increment of 19 million cubic meters. The importance that such plantations have attained in the region is in itself a clear indication of the difficulties encountered in mobilizing the region's immense natural forest resources.

There is reason to believe that the tropical rain forests of western Africa on the other hand will support a considerably larger output in 1975. Production in some of the presently heavily logged areas will probably decline, and some currently sought-after species may become scarcer. But the reserves elsewhere in the region are substantial and are being made accessible. However, it is not possible to say whether these remoter areas can be worked without a rise in costs and prices. Nor can any estimate be made of how much additional volume might be forthcoming, as it is likely to be governed in large part by the external demand for tropical hardwoods and by progress made in increasing the marketability of the many species the forests contain. But, irrespective of the magnitude it attains, it must be a matter of concern that the continuing expansion of output in the region is taking place before enough is known about the present extent of the resource, or about the eventual claims of agriculture upon forest land, or about the potential of the resource to sustain output at any given level. There is evidence that in some of the areas which have been most heavily drawn upon the resource is being depleted too far and too fast. To date the measures taken in these areas to ensure natural regeneration or planted replacement are on nothing like the scale that would be required to sustain even current levels of output.

Elsewhere in Africa, plantations will again be of growing importance, in particular to supply industrial wood. Considerable areas of maturing plantations in eastern Africa will have come to harvesting age by 1975, and the output from the plantations in southern Africa is expected to grow from the 6.8 million cubic meters ® cut annually in 1960-65 to 11.8 million in 1975.

There are indications that removals in the rich and very extensive tropical forests of southeast Asia, especially those of Indonesia, Malaysia and New Guinea, could very likely be greatly increased much more easily than in Africa or Latin America. Harvesting operations are more attractive because there is a greater number of commercially valuable species present in both mainland and insular forests, and over much of the area there is ready access to deep-water transportation.

It is expected that the present rapid expansion of logging through this area could, and probably will, build output up by 1975 to a level well above its present volume, high though the latter is. But the longer established producers cannot be expected to continue to expand output at the rates experienced recently. Indeed it must again be a matter of concern whether they can even sustain present outputs for long. In this connection, the very large acreage of teak plantations is encouraging evidence of continued supplies of that valuable wood.

The rest of Asia - the Near East, south Asia, and China (Mainland) - has much less prospect for increases in removals in anything like adequate amounts. Attention was drawn earlier to the severity of the wood deficit of this huge, heavily populated area. Even the very large planting program in China (Mainland) cannot be expected to produce much wood by 1975.

However, plantation forests will have a more important impact on wood supplies in the last area to be considered, the Pacific subregion. In New Zealand, removals from plantations are expected to rise from 3.5 million cubic meters ® in 1961 to 7.4 million in 1975. Removals of industrial wood in Australasia as a whole are expected to be about 21 million cubic meters ® in 1975, which compares with 15.4 million in 1961.

The question that now arises is how adequate all these expected increases in production of wood are likely to be in meeting the 1975 requirements estimated in the preceding chapter. As it has not been possible to make estimates of future production for all subregions, a complete comparison cannot be made, although the principal producing and consuming areas have been covered. However, as wood is largely consumed in processed form, the location and evolution of wood-using industries becomes an important element in the balance between the supply and consumption of wood. Trade in wood and wood products is of course another essential element in this balance. Consideration of the relationship between removals and requirements will therefore be deferred until after these two matters have been discussed, in the two chapters that follow.

ANNEX TABLE III-A. - SELECTED FEATURES OF THE WORLD'S FORESTS AS REPORTED FOR 1963¹

¹ These are the data reported in FAO world forest inventory 1963. It should be borne in mind that they are not necessarily fully comparable because of variation in coverage and definitions. - ² For countries where 1963 data are not yet available, data for total forest area as given in FAO world forest inventory 1958 have been used. - ³ Total forest area of countries reporting expressed as a percentage of total subregional forest area. - ⁴ Refers to total forest land excluding protection reserves in which cutting of industrial wood is prohibited. - ⁵ Including a few areas for which ownership is not yet determined. - ⁶ Excludes some unclassified productive forest land. - ⁷ Refers to classified productive forest land not reserved for protection purpose. - ⁸ All publicity owned forests. - ⁹ Refers to commercial forest land only. - ¹⁰ Includes large areas of sparsely forested land used for grazing.

ANNEX TABLE III-B. - REMOVALS OF ROUNDWOOD. 1955-57 TO 1960-62

¹ Figures for 1960-62 are estimated total removals; where recorded removals are significantly different they are shown in brackets (for further explanation, see Appendix).