In Italy the surface area regained by forests is constantly increasing

While overall in the world the surface area of ​​forests continues to progressively reduce, in Italy it has been growing without interruption since the end of the Second World War.It did so by even recording an expansion of 28% in the thirty years between 1985 and 2015, in which it went from 8.7 to 11.1 million hectares.Italy is thus the second European country - preceded only by Spain - in terms of forest cover.Furthermore, the hectares of sustainably managed forests in Italy rose to 980 thousand in 2023, with an increase of +5.9% compared to the previous year.

As demonstrated by the statistics of FAO-UNEP, currently the surface area of ​​forests in the world amounts to a total of 41 billion hectares, representing 31% of the emerged lands and counting around 60 thousand species of trees.54.1% of it is located in the United States, Canada, Brazil, Russia and China.However, over the last 35 years, forest cover has increased across the globe a drop of more than 4%, having lost approximately 178 million hectares.According to data compiled by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the University of Maryland, an area almost the size of Switzerland, for a total of 37,000 km², was cleared of previously undisturbed rainforests last year.That's a loss rate of 10 football fields per minute, often driven by agricultural expansion.In Italy, however, the scales tip the other way, being in the decades copiously increased the forest surface.Today, forests cover 37% of the peninsula - surpassing states such as Germany and Switzerland, which stop at six percentage points lower - with regions such as Liguria, Tuscany, Umbria, Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Trentino Alto Adige reaching even touch 40% of forest area.Meanwhile, the hectares of sustainably managed forests in Italy in 2023 are climbed to over 980 thousand last year, with almost 6 percentage points more than in 2022.Thanks to these advances, how emerges from the Annual Report of PEFC Italy, the body promoting the certification of good management of forestry assets, have been obtained well 14 new certifications and 14 regions with at least one certified forest.The number of certifications for ecosystem services has also grown (+47%) and the processing companies that have obtained PEFC Chain of Custody certification (+8.6%).

There is no shortage of critical aspects in the question, since, in particular, the phenomenon of rewilding, according to which the forest surface increases and the trees grow also and above all due to the depopulation and of decline in the use of wood (in Italy much more significant than in other European countries) in mountain areas.Neglect and abandonment often cause harmful effects, especially in relation to the issue of fires, which, due to drought and climate change, they risk to interest increasingly large portions of the territory.At the same time, Ispra data show that some forests in Italy are shrinking, in particular hygrophilous woods, old-growth forests and lowland vegetation, which are at risk from fires, buildings and infrastructure.It is precisely on this side that the issue should have an impact Nature Restoration Act, which at the end of February has obtained the approval of the European Parliament, despite all the political forces that support the Meloni government in Italy having voted against it.The EU Council should have immediately given the final green light, but it was postponed to a later date.

[by Stefano Baudino]