BEIRUT, Rotorua and Curitiba - many people would be hard put exactly to locate these three places. They could scarcely be much further removed from each other geographically and ethnically. Yet they were closely linked in 1964 as being the sites - in Lebanon, New Zealand and Brazil - of sessions of three of FAO's regional forestry commissions, for the Near East, for the Asia-Pacific region, and for Latin America.
Two other commissions are due to meet in 1965 - the African Forestry Commission in an east African country and the North American Forestry Commission in Washington, D.C. The European Forestry Commission will next meet in 1966.
The general object of these commissions is periodically to bring together the heads of national forestry administrations and representatives of forest industries to exchange views and information on matters of forest policy of regional concern, and to agree on appropriate recommendations in this regard to be transmitted to the Director-General of FAO, and then in turn to Member Governments. The commissions may also be called on to advise on suitable practices and action in relation to particular technical problems, and for this purpose usually set up subsidiary bodies that can be disbanded when their work is finished.
The problem which especially exercised all three commission meetings reported in this issue was the development of forest industries based on man-made forests. That forests should need to be man made is clear enough under Near East conditions. It may appear unusual in Latin America, where the vast expanse of unused natural forest is so often mentioned; still, however, the trend of interest for industrial purposes is toward compact blocks of planted forests of selected species. New Zealand was chosen as the host country for the Asia-Pacific Forestry Commission because it is already past the point of no return in changing from a wholly indigenous to a wholly exotic timber economy. New Zealand forestry, an excellent book issued for this session by the Ministry of Forests, says: "Although native timber will figure in the trade for many years to come, its relative and absolute importance is declining rapidly."
There are many special reasons why this has happened in New Zealand. It was not entirely demand for wood that devastated the original native forests. Pioneer settlers wanted the land for crops and livestock. For the better part of a century their axes and fires widened areas of settlement by methods both wasteful and ill advised. Heavily eroded bill country in many places is a reminder of hard pioneering work that would have been better left undone.
Other parts of the world have suffered similar loss of the forest cover now regarded as essential. Erosion around the Mediterranean, deserts in Asia and northeast Brazil, vast stretches of clay and stone in China, bleak hillsides in the once famous cedar forests of Lebanon - such sights tell of periods when need overcame prudence. In some areas, reforestation is gradually providing fresh shelter for land that slips away if unprotected from rain and winds.
Reforestation is also gradually providing for the future wood needs of expanding populations. New Zealand, for instance, is developing a timber, pulp and paper industry of respectable stature by world standards.
As the 1964 meetings of FAO regional forestry commissions showed, other countries also are eager to establish new sources of raw material for forest industries that will generate both a large measure of internal employment and the maximum of foreign income.
