The Soviet Union contained a substantial part of the world's forests and the fate of those forests and their effect on carbon dynamics remain unknown for many areas of the former Eastern Bloc.
The fate of tropical forests is a global concern, yet many far-reaching decisions affecting forest resources are made locally.
The fate of tropical forests is a global environmental issue [1], yet many far-reaching decisions concerning forest resources are made at local level [2].
Still, the fate of secondary forests lies not just in biology.
The fate of the forests in Brazil, Indonesia, the Philippines (pictured above) and elsewhere around the world could hang on the success of this approach.
Look, for instance, at the fate of the forests on the Korean peninsula: in South Korea, one of the world's fastest-growing countries in recent decades, forest cover is stable, whereas North Korea has lost a third of its forests in the past 20 years.
For 20 years or more concerns about nuclear waste, food production, the quality of river water, the health of our soils and seas, the fate of our forests, the impact of road-building and many other important ecological issues have been steadily marginalised, starved of resources or pushed off the agenda by climate change.
Ending a conflict over the fate of a forest rich in both wood and wildlife, loggers, biologists and the government of Gabon have agreed to keep bulldozers and chain saws out of a 1,900-square-mile 1,900-square-mile 1,900-square-mile lareservemals ever recorded in a tropical rain forest.
Its European customers, tutored by pressure-groups, are nervous about the fate of the forest, and its bankers are becoming so.
