Global open models, global open resources, billions of voices and lives
FAO Forestry @FAOForestry @FAO’s flagship publication The State of the World’s Forests 2024 contains 18 case studies from around the world that illustrate how forest-sector innovation can bring about positive change.
Read it now https://ow.ly/CFGN50SGXZG
#SOFO2024 https://pic.x.com/7jnkduob0r
Replying to @FAOForestry and @FAO
Global open models, global open resources, billions of voices and lives – some notes
The importance of forests is being justified on the basis of users and uses. The net loss of forests from 2015 to 2020 was 10.2 Million hectares each year. From 1990 to 2000 it was 15.8 Million hectares each year. The total is 420 Million hectares or 4.2 Million square Kilometers or (2049 Km)x(2049 Km) converted to other uses.
China added 19.37 Million Hectare = (440.1 Km)x(440.1 Km) of “forests” from 2010-2020. China has 206,861,000 ha = (1438.3 Km)x(1438.3 Km) of “forest”.
In 2020 the total forest on earth was 4.1 Billion hectares = (6403 Km)x(6403 Km)
The forests are counted strictly on economic value to Russia, Brazil, Canada, USA, China, Australia, DR Congo, Indonesia, Peru, India with sales to other countries.
The report is mostly an inventory of land allocated to “forest” by those countries. They are the sole determiners, and forests are owned by groups inside those countries. It is economics and some local people go into the forests.
Reporting on “mangroves” has improved. Much “mangrove” is being converted to “aquaculture”, “oil palm plantations”, “rice cultivation”. “pond shrimp”. “sea level rise”.
The game is all “land use”, “ownership”, “benefits”. The few owning the land determine its use, increasing area affected by weather, and some places taken as common by anyone who can gain access. Insects, fires, disease.
Paper and Paper products, pulp and recovered paper, wooden furniture, wood and wood products and 5% natural rubber, hone, forest nuts, mushroom, tanning extraction, bamboo, cork, gums and resins, rattan. Firewood is in there somewhere. Plus lots of fires and floods.
FAO is a forest promoter, forest products promoter, monitor, reporter, world trade monitor, local trade monitor, global reporter
– but always out of date.
In the 122 page report, “innovation” is used 539 times. “innovative” 66 times. “innovations: 155 times. “sustainable” used 196 times. “climate” 145 times. “million” 65 times. “billion” 46 times. “forest” 1160 times.
The FAO is trying to act as stewards, and has no real control over the individuals making individual decisions.
I think the message is “smart dedicated people might make a difference”. To look at things more widely, completely, integrated, quantitative with skills that reward the people working at FAO (“food and agriculture”? forests and biomaterials?) and related organizations. Lots of people are involved, so the global “woody products” industry has grown and diversified. It needs good people, and “we want good ones who care about the whole”.
There is land area, warehouses, resources – used outside the forest areas. There is installed and in-use products. There is products in trash.
It is an interesting and “innovative” report (pun intended). But it is wordy, repetitive, does not address ownership and voices. Advertising can push good people and systems into dead ends. A few loud ones can control the whole. A few rich ones can devastate whole regions and none of the people involved nearby, workers, users, remote, long term – has any say at all.
Technological, Financial, Social, Institutional, Policy – hides more than it reveals, and it assumes no innovation in ownership, decision making, sharing, or space exploration, AIs, education, rewards, payment for contributions, creation of new disciplines, revision of all research, revision of government generally. The UN itself needs total revamping and “innovation”.
“Accounting” is only used 7 times. “account” 27 times. “verify” 2 times. “verification” 8 times. “audit” is used 1 time. “responsible” 26. “responsibility” 1 time.
It cries out for a simulation. I am just so so tired. It is easy to understand and see alternatives, hard to get to the few hundred people who control the world for the other billions. It is not fair. It is not open. It is not complete. It is not really accessible to all humans or their AIs and systems.
Richard Collins, The Internet Foundation
