Ecobreves – COLOMBIA: Promoting Commercial Forestry

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BOGOTA, Feb 7 2005 (IPS) - The forest industry is responsible for 38,000 direct jobs in Colombia, and if the area planted for commercial ends would expand from 150,000 to 3.0 million hectares in the next five years, the number of jobs would be 760,000, according to ''Outlook for investment in the Colombian forest industry''. According to this study, presented Jan. 31 by the Ministry of Agriculture, and to data from the National Forestry Research and Development Corporation, the useable area for sustainable commercial forestry is 16 million hectares: 4.5 million appropriate for unlimited commercial forestry, and 11.5 million with minor restrictions.

Adolfo Aristizábal, president of the national council of the Federation of Logging Industries, told Tierramérica that Colombia is a nation of forests, but has nowhere near the levels of industrial cultivation of other countries.