The word "frontier" conjures up notions of new challenges, of new lands, or new intellectual endeavors ripe for human exploitation and development. If a frontier is out there, people will not be far behind.

The frontier vision often saw trees as a commodity at best or simply an obstacle in the way of progress. Over many centuries, about half of the world\'s forests -- almost 3 billion hectares -- were burned, cleared, or cut down. Just one fifth of the world\'s original forest cover remains in large undisturbed tracts today, and the cutting has accelerated: about 16 million hectares are cut or burned each year. In the course of this devastation, we are losing species and a valuable cornucopia of resources, altering the atmosphere\'s composition and brutally degrading ecosystems.

Road building and other infrastructure development, often accompanying logging, mining, or other large investments, are also proceeding quickly. Once the way is paved, population pressure and landlessness in some parts of the world, especially developing countries, can prompt migration into frontier regions and rapid deforestation by small land holders and large land speculators.

There are better ways to use, manage and preserve forests. The reach of human ingenuity extends to the stewardship of trees, but at the frontiers the destruction continues.

This report describes for the first time the location and status of the world\'s frontier forests -- the large, ecologically intact, and relatively undisturbed natural forests that still remain. Working with several partners, including the World Conservation Monitoring Centre, the World Wildlife Fund, and 90 forest experts, WRI developed a first map of frontier forest areas, assembling in one place unprecedented location-specific information on current and future threats to forest integrity.

Using a geographic information system, WRI has developed a single global database and a preliminary series of regional maps depicting the world\'s frontier forests -- both first of their kinds. In the coming years, WRI will update and improve these maps and get their obvious message to the world\'s decision-makers.

This report is the opening salvo of WRI\'s Forest Frontiers Initiative, a five-year, multi-disciplinary effort to promote stewardship in and around the world\'s last major frontier forests by influencing investment, policy, and public opinion.

For each forest frontier region -- in Amazonia, Central Africa, Asia, North America, and Russia -- WRI is building a network of policy-makers, activists, investors, and researchers to promote alternatives to forest destruction that take advantage of the full economic potential of forests, not just immediate revenue from logging and forest clearing. As part of this effort, WRI will help build the capacity of local organizations to carry on this work independently.

The business community is an important partner in this effort. We are working with others to develop case studies with innovative firms to demonstrate the business impacts and opportunities that sustainability presents.

We must act quickly. Transnational logging companies are already operating in Siberia and Canada and rapidly expanding operations into South America, the Caribbean Rim, and Central Africa. Within the next five years, many pending and proposed contracts will be signed, and the leverage of governments and non-governmental organizations will be greatly diminished.

At the same time, mainstream industry and investors are increasingly open to change. There is a significant opportunity to increase market demand for "green" timber. WRI is already a backer of the Forest Stewardship Council, the first international organization created to evaluate, accredit, and monitor organizations that certify sustainably produced forest products. Meanwhile, many developing countries are searching for practical policy alternatives to destructive timber harvest agreements.

We are deeply grateful to the AVINA Group and the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs for their general support for the Forest Frontiers Initiative and to the Wallace Global Fund for supporting this project.

Jonathan Lash
President
World Resources Institute