An increasing number of developing countries are outsourcing deforestation to help protect and restore their local forests, according to a new study. The research was funded in part by the REDD-ALERT 'Reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation through alternative land uses in rainforests of the Tropics' project.

The results of the research undergone within the Reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation through alternative land uses in rainforests of the Tropics project, REDD-ALERT, funded with 3.49 million Euro under the Environment Theme of the EU's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and could affect measures currently being taken to ensure the sustainability of the world's remaining forests.

Researchers from Stanford University and Rutgers University in the US and the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL) in Belgium said our planet's forests are disappearing at a rate of more than 32 million acres each year - an area that is about the size of England.

For the purposes of their study, the team evaluated the link between reforestation at the national scale and global trade in forest and agricultural products over a near 50-year period (1961-2007). The team discovered that six developing nations introduced measures that focused more on net reforestation than net deforestation: Chile, China, Costa Rica, El Salvador, India and Vietnam.

They also found that save for India, the countries reported a drop in their timber harvests and new farmland, which triggered a higher demand for imported wood and agricultural products.

The TECLIM researcher said the net land-use displacement jumped to 52 acres of imported agricultural or forestry products for every 100 acres reforested. In a nutshell, for one acre of reforested land, a half acre was used elsewhere, including countries like Brazil and Indonesia, which represented 61% of all the deforestation in humid tropics between 2000 and 2005.

A number of actions can be performed to ease deforestation abroad including integrating environmental degradation data in global trade rules, and strengthening international cooperation on issues related to deforestation and land use.