BANGKOK, April 13 (Bernama) -- The Asia Pacific region lost more than six million hectares of natural forests, mainly converted to agricultural crops and oil palm plantations, during the past five years, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said Thursday.

Patrick Durst, the FAO's senior forestry officer for Asia-Pacific, said that this loss of more than one million hectares of natural forests each year was alarming.

While plantation forests are an extremely valuable resource and will undoubtedly supply an increasing portion of wood and fibre needs in the future, they should not be considered a substitute for the region's dwindling natural forests, Durst said in a statement released by FAO here.

However, the Asia-Pacific region recorded the highest rate of forest plantation in the world over the past five years and this helped the region reverse the 1990s trend of net loss of forest cover into a net gain during the period from 2000 to 2005, it said.

"From a net loss of 1.3 million hectares per year in the 1990s, Asia-Pacific boasted a net gain of more than 600 000 hectares per year between 2000 and 2005, making it, along with Europe, the world's only region with a sustained increase in forests."

The FAO said the gain was primarily due to an increase in forest plantations.

Of the 10 countries in the world with the largest plantation areas, six are in the Asia-Pacific region, namely China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam, with China posting an overall increase in forest area of more than four million hectares per year between 2000 and 2005.

The region, however, still has just 0.2 hectares of forest per person, the lowest amount per capita in the world compared with 1.1 hectares per person outside of Asia and the Pacific, the FAO said ahead of a key forestry officials meeting in Dehradun, India, beginning Monday.

More than 200 international delegates from across the region, including heads of forestry from 15 Asian countries will gather at the meeting of the Asia-Pacific Forestry Commission in Dehradun.

The FAO said the overall increase in forest area, resulting from the rapid expansion of plantations, largely masked the disturbing continued loss of natural forests.

Wildfires also increased in scale and frequency throughout East Asia during the past five years and were also problematic in Australia and Southeast Asia.

"Invasive species also caused huge losses in forest productivity. Economic losses resulting from invasive plant species in the region are estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars," it said.

It added that the region hadmade good progress in reforming and updating forest policies and legislation in recent years and throughout the region, countries were also frequently decentralising forest management and giving more involvement to the private sector and civil society in forestry matters.

It said the progress made in forest policies, legislation and institutions in the Asia-Pacific showed a high level of political commitment to sustainable forest management and this was commendable.

However, much more should be done to address the loss of natural forests and wildfires and invasive species.

-- BERNAMA