State of the World's forests 2007 : Oceania

Abstract

Forests and other wooded land together cover about one-third of the Asia and the Pacific region. Excluding the Russian Federation, forest area in 2005 was estimated at 734 million hectares, accounting for about 19 percent of global forest area. The region as a whole experienced a net increase in forest area of about 633 000 ha annually during 2000-2005. This is an important breakthrough, since the region had experienced a net loss of forest cover during the 1990s. The improvement was largely the result of an increase of more than 4 million hectares per year in China, which has been investing heavily in afforestation in recent years.