Fuelwood collectine

It is said that by the end of The century much of the world will have enough food to, ..eat -but no fuel to cook it with ESCAP (1991) record fuelwood and charcoal production in most of the ESCAP countires ;at 767.6 milion cube meters, at an anual rate of increase of 2 percent. Projections for the end of the twenty century indicate that the problem of fuel shortages is likely to reach alarming proportion in many states of India. (Muranjan 1987), where 80 percent of the rural population relies on fuelwood for cooking ((Hegde 1991). It is estimated that by the turn of this century, the annual demand for fuelwood in India alone will he 313 milion tons v which is
equivalent to the harvest from 20-25 million hectares of forest. Given the current rates of demand supply and a/forestation, India would not he able tone/forestation, India would not he able to meet even 50 percent of this future need.
and local woodlots. One person can obtain an adequate supply of firewood for the whole year from one-half of a hectare of average forest, woodland or scrub, without causing damage to the forest. However, as populations increase and people try to find fuelwood as close by as possible, often many more people will harvest from the same area and the forest will be degraded (Myers 1989).

As there currently are no substitutes for fuelwood and since populations continue to increase, removing fuelwood from the forests is likely to continue and likely to result in creation of more of hacked forests.