Over the last 20 years, about 300 million hectares (six times the size of France) of mainly tropical forest have been converted to other land uses, such as farms and pasture or large-scale plantations of oil palm, rubber and other cash crops. Increasingly fragmented forests have become much more susceptible to fire than was ever thought possible: tens of millions of hectares of normally fire-resistant forest have been destroyed by catastrophic infernos in the Amazon, Central America, Indonesia, West Africa and Madagascar.

But outright loss of forest is not the whole picture. Comparable areas of forest have been severely degraded. Large-scale clear-cuts in temperate and boreal regions - often in violation of national laws - have not only wiped out much of the remaining old-growth forest, but also caused long-term damage to freshwater ecosystems. In the humid tropics, timber harvesting is much more selective, but tens of millions of hectares have been cut in unnecessarily destructive ways.

Worldwide, 80% of original forest cover has been cleared, fragmented, or otherwise degraded. In the Atlantic rainforests of Brazil, the West African rainforests, Madagascar, and Sumatra - some of the richest biological treasure houses of the world - much less than 10% of the original forest cover is left. There, many populations of plants and animals are losing their long-term viability through fragmentation and genetic erosion. A wave of extinctions is just around the corner - unless "radical" action is taken.

Seven tenths of the world's remaining forests are in twelve countries: Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Congo DR, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Peru, Russia, USA and Venezuela. But so far we have failed to convince most forest-rich countries that there is such a thing as forest-rich development. And even in countries where total forest cover is stable or increasing, biologically unique old-growth forest ecosystems are being replaced with secondary growth and plantations. Logs continue to be the preferred currency of political patronage in many countries with old-growth forests.

At the same time, we have gained a much better understanding of forests in a number of key areas. Ecologists have started to develop rigorous methods to prioritise the forests richest in biological diversity and most in need of protection. Climatologists have a much improved understanding of how different forest ecosystems have evolved, and continue to evolve, under changing climates. Environmental economists are getting a better handle on the long-term economic importance of the services provided by intact forest ecosystems: water and nutrient cycling, carbon sequestration and the conservation of many animal and plant species that are likely to prove useful in the future. Social scientists have documented the forest management practices of local communities and indigenous peoples, and analysed how these might be harnessed for the future. Pioneering foresters have developed low-impact logging techniques that are sometimes even cheaper than conventional logging. Thanks to improved means of communication, knowledge about threats to forests, such as agricultural conversion, infrastructure development and mining can be exchanged and used rapidly by conservation advocates.

But despite the existence of all this knowledge, many high-level decision-makers still view forests as dispensable quantities, or worse, as obstacles to progress. What would it take to convince them otherwise?

We need to learn to communicate much more concisely and convincingly with time-strapped politicians, and with the people that elect them. Our arguments about forest conservation need to be explained in terms of concrete benefits to people's well-being. Wherever forests of global importance are threatened and local benefits are not sufficient to make the case, mechanisms have to be devised and funds mobilised to involve local people in, and compensate them for saving the forest. This will no doubt be an uphill struggle. Powerful vested interests will resist changes to the status quo that has served them so well over the past twenty years - and that has made the forests burn and fall.

Therefore, we will need to engage with the forces that really change things, by working together with the best in business and civil society. We should continue to work with governments to reform forest policies and laws and improve their enforcement. But we should become less dependent on action just by them.

Dynamism, innovation, creativity and communications will light the path towards a forest- rich future.