Latin America and the Caribbean form one of the most important forest regions in the world, with nearly one quarter of the world's forest cover.
The region has around 834 million ha of tropical forest and 130 million ha of other forest types: temperate, dry, coastal and montane. Forests cover 48 percent of the total land area: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela contain 56 percent of the regional total.
The Amazon Basin in South America contains the world's most extensive tropical rainforest. It includes at least 20 different rainforest types and is considered to be the world's richest ecosystem in terms of biodiversity.
But although the region still has almost half of the world’s tropical forests, the rate of deforestation and degradation is alarming: 4.48 million ha per year for 2000–2005.
It is crucial that FSC plays an important part here, in its traditional role of balancing environmental, social and economic interests to achieve responsible forest stewardship.