America America's forest cover as of 2010 was 304.022 million hectares, which represents 33% of the country's geographical land Between 1990 and 2010, America was losing 384,350 hectares of forest cover annually. This resulted to the establishment of programs like Forest Service Reforestation, Stewardships Incentives Program, and the Forestry Incentives Program which were tasked with the responsibilities of overseeing the creation of new forests to help replace those wasted for industrial and human settlement purposes. Further, the US Code, Title 16, Chapter 2 of National Forests calls for the establishment of new
National Forests by the American Forest Service to help minimize the impacts of
deforestation due to human activities. Some other acts include the 1973
Endangered Species Act and the
Clean Water Act.
Australia Before British settlement in Australia in 1788, forests covered 9% of the entire country and they were further destroyed by human activities like farming,
grazing, and human activities such as
human settlement. In Australia, afforestation endeavours are conducted by the National Tree Program in conjunction with the National Coordination Committee, which was created in 1987. The endeavours of the former include supplying seedlings to members of society to create forests in society. The committee compensates landowners which resulted in the planting of 15.9 million trees in Australia. Some other initiatives include the One Billion Trees Program as well as the Save the Bush Program which oversees the creation of forests in the nation.
China The forest area in China is 175 million
hectares, and annual timber accumulation is 12.5 billion cubic meters; the World Bank ranks China as the fifth country when it comes to forest-deficiency. However, the government has put in place measures for compensatory afforestation to meet the tremendous economic growth characterized by vast industrialization. In 1999 there was a compensation afforestation scheme in
Shanxi,
Gansu, and
Sichuan where 14 million hectares were planted to compensate for the cultivated forests and human settlements. Moreover, in 2018 China's State Forestry Administration head Zhang Jianlong announced that China would grow 6.6 million hectares with most of them being in the
Xiongan Development Zone and
Hebei to help counter for the forests destroyed for industrial growth and human settlement. In relation to the failure of the way the funds are being used misappropriate, Indian High Court gave an order for the creation of a better pool of funds and therefore, a new organization called the Compensatory Afforestation Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) was established. CAMPA act, refers to a notice in the Indian legislation whose main aim is to provide appropriate mechanism that is institutional, at the center and in every Union and State Territory, so as to ensure that there is proper utilization in transparent and efficient amounts of manner that has been put in lands in the forest diverted to land that is used for non-forest use. By the year 2019, offices had been started to be set up of the National CAMPA oversees proper utilization of funds. But some scholars still argue that some part of the fund needs to be paid to the aboriginals of the area.
U.K. The effects of vast human
urbanization characterized by industrial growth resulted to reduction of forest cover by approximately 4% resulting to the creation of the Forestry Act legislated in 1951 which required wood owners to obtain licenses before cutting down trees. In 1988, the Woodland Grant Scheme was introduced to oversee the creation of new forests and resulted to the establishment of 700 hectares in the U.K. In fact, in 2018, the government announced that it would create new forests in various places like the Liverpool and the city of Hull. ==Progress==