Rights & Tenure in the News » TIME: Good News and Bad News for
the World's Tropical Forests Another day, another global report
on the world's land use. This time a wide-ranging survey from
the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO)—an
intergovernmental body that promotes the sustainable use of
forest resources—has revealed that the area of the world's
tropical forests that are under some form of sustainable
management has increased 50% since 2005, from 69 million
hectares to 183 million hectares. That's good. And the area of
timber-production under some form of management plan—as opposed
to a timber free-for-all—has increased by one-third since 2005
and now totals 131 million hectares. But at the same time,
that's a little more than a quarter of the 431 million hectares
globally that are under timber production, meaning that much of
the world still has virtually no forest policy whatsoever. And
less than 10% of all forests are sustainably managed according
to the ITTO's fairly exhaustive numbers. F