| Choi Byeong-am, center, minister of Korea Forest Service, poses with Maria Helena Semedo, third from left, deputy director-general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, and other participants at the ministerial forum on financing for forests at the World Forestry Congress held at COEX in Seoul, Tuesday. Courtesy of Korea Forest Service |
By Baek Byung-yeul
Choi Byeong-am, minister of the Korea Forest Service (KFS), urged the global community Tuesday to start evaluating the public value of forests, as efforts by countries to prevent deforestation will consequently lead the way to achieving carbon neutrality worldwide.
“In terms of responding to climate change, the importance of the forest needs no further emphasis. This was further clarified during the 26th U.N. Climate Change Conference of the Parties following the Paris Climate Agreement,” the minister said during a ministerial forum on financing for forests held on the second day of the World Forestry Congress (WFC) in Seoul, which will run until Friday.
The ministerial forum was designed to showcase leading examples of financial and economic policies and other measures to halt deforestation and forest degradation and support sustainable landscape use.
Other participants in the forum included U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Deputy Director-General Maria Helena Semedo, Global Green Growth Institute Director-General Frank Rijsberman, Republic of the Congo Forest Economy Minister Rosalie Matondo and Gabon's Water, Forests, the Sea and Environment Minister Lee White.
Participants introduced their countries' fiscal and financial policies related to climate and the environment and discussed the prevention of forest devastation. They also urged increased national interest in forestry, saying that 10 million hectares of forest are lost every year.
“As the only source of absorbing emissions, forests can reduce carbon emissions by 34 billion tons per year through afforestation, reforestation and forest management activities. These activities have the potential to reduce carbon emissions by about one-third and it is safe to say that climate change targets cannot be achieved without sustainable use and conservation of forests,” Choi said.
The minister stressed the importance of efforts to more accurately quantify the public interest in forests, saying that securing enough financial resources to make more forests is not an easy task.
“In many countries, woods have been temporarily raised to support each country's gross domestic product by converting forests into farmland to increase agricultural productivity or cutting down a large number of trees above the standard. But the increase in land degradation and natural disasters in the process was not considered,” he said.
“To prevent this, I think it is important to estimate not only the value of forests traded in the market but also the enormous public value of forest that cannot be traded. It is first necessary to quantify the public value of forests.”
The minister cited the case of Korea, which has been estimating the public value of forests since 1987.
“Korea, where forests account for 63 percent of the nation, has been evaluating the value of forests since 1987. As of 2018, the annual value of forests in Korea was around $170 billion. The figure is more than 30 times the annual economic output of $5.5 billion of forests here. As seen in the case of Korea, the importance of forests can be highlighted to financial authorities by converting the public value of forests into economic value,” Choi said.