Forests on a full Earth

Abstract

Objective: a return to a wholesome human habitat

The continued operation of the biosphere as a wholesome human habitat would be expected to emerge as one of several persistent collective purposes in human affairs. Daly (1993) has pointed to the challenge as accommodating the transition from an empty Earth, where resources exceed demand, to a full Earth, where demand routinely exceeds the resource. Forests are so large in every aspect of the biophysics of the human habitat that their functional integrity is intrinsic to that purpose. How can the functional integrity of forests on a full Earth best be assured on a global basis over the next decades as all pressures on the human habitat continue to soar? Such is the challenge before the World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development, now completing its final hearings and preparing its report. The Commission was established in 1995 as a non-governmental group of distinguished citizens from the forested countries to do what governments had been unable to do in 1992 at the Rio Conference, namely to address the critical global and international issues of forests in the context of the emergent public interests, as opposed to continued destructive commercial exploitation. The Commission's staff and offices are in Geneva. Its report will be released in 1998.