Since the early 1990s, rainforests have been shrinking at a rate of about 12.3 million hectares (30.4 million acres) per year, with the leading cause of deforestation being the clearing of land to feed an ever-growing population.

"Farmers' poverty requires them to clear more and more land because they are unable to buy the grains that would allow them to produce more on less land," Paris-based engineer Jean-Paul Lanly said Tuesday.

"On a continent like Africa, where 99 percent of the people rely on agriculture," it is "very destructive" for the forests, said Daniel Ngantou, director of the Central African bureau of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources in Yaounde.

According to the head of the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization, Jacques Diouf, deforestation will continue in developing countries as long as their economic conditions prevent them from being able to battle poverty -- with some 840 million people going hungry.

In Africa alone, rainforests -- which cover some 528 million hectaresbillion acres) of land -- are in danger of dwindling by "a third or half" between now and 2025, according to Matti Palo and Erkki Lehto, professors at the Finnish Forest Research Institute in Helsinki.

But all hope of breaking this dismal cycle is not lost, said Diouf, who saw "positive and encouraging elements" in the fact that most developing and emerging countries -- save Russia and Albania -- have managed to stop deforestation within their borders.

Better still, the northern hemisphere has restored nearly three million hectares (7.4 million acres) of forests each year since the early 1990s, but this has not prevented the annual loss of some 9.4 million hectaresmillion acres) of forest land throughout the world during the same period.

From Malaysia to Central America, and from Brazil to the Congo Basin, several reforesting initiatives have exceeded initial expectations, often as a result of the will of informed locals. But every project requires time and money.

According to Ngantou, it is imperative to recognize the role these forests, including those in the Congo Basin, play in capturing carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.

Marc Dourojeanni, chief environmental adviser for the Inter-American Development Bank in Brazil, proposed compensating people who take steps to save the forests.

TERRA.WIRE