Forests in a warming world: A time for new policies

Forests contain more than twice as much carbon as the atmosphere and process through their metabolism about 1/7 of the atmospheric carbon annually. Deforestation currently is adding carbon to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide at an increasing rate and causing the impoverishment of soils over large areas in the tropics. But deforestation is also occurring in the temperate and boreal forests. In most cases deforestation is the result of national policies. It proceeds in the United States in response to economic pressures and political weakness, even corruption.The re-establishment of forests has the potential for contributing to the stabilization of the composition of the atmosphere by removing carbon as carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it on land for an indefinite period. Such a transition in land use is difficult to imagine in a world in which the human population is expanding continuously and impoverished land is accumulating.Global interests in management of forests introduce a new element into international relations. Progress in effecting the shifts in controls on land use required to control deforestation in the interests of stabilizing climate and preserving biotic resources will depend on clear definition of the details of the problem by the scientific community and a further definition of how to proceed.