Today, 1.6 billion people and 80% of the world's terrestrial species depend on forests for livelihoods and habitat.

Since forests are essential to the lives of many, it is only natural that their conservation is a matter of importance. Some countries, like Bhutan, have enshrined forest preservation into their constitutions, requiring at least 60% of their land to remain forested. Others, like Costa Rica, provide incentives such as landowners receiving payments for adopting sustainable forest management practices. But, given the measures some countries have adopted to practice forest conservation, what exactly, is a forest?

During my sojourn in Helsinki, it was practically impossible to draw a line between the city center and the ubiquitous treescapes. For the socially reserved Finns, trees seemed like ideal companions. In downtown Abu Dhabi, however, I lovingly count each tree in Capital Park, treasuring it as a small forest on its own and the UAE’s “lung”.. How is it that these two very different kinds of tree cover can both be called forests?

The truth is, we lack a universal definition of forests. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations defines forests as a minimum canopy cover of 10%, a minimum tree height of 5 meters, a minimum area of 0.5 hectares, and where agriculture is not the dominant land use. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) slightly raises the minimum canopy threshold to 30%, but its definitions still allow areas with sparse tree cover to qualify as forests. However, forests are more than a collection of trees over a certain minimum area. They embody symbiosis between flora, fauna, and human communities, particularly in the Global South. The existing definitions overlook these complexities.

Geography further complicates forest definitions. Latitude, temperature, rainfall patterns, soil composition, species composition, provision of natural capital, and human activities create widely different landscapes. As NASA points out, forest calculations become especially tricky in areas of intermediate tree cover, such as savannahs, shrublands, mountain ridge forests, and taiga forests challenge a single categorization.

Standardization is equally tricky. To illustrate, it makes little sense to compare the montane forests that grow on the steep, isolated slopes in the river valleys of Tibet with the lush native forests that flourish under the warm subtropical weather in the North Island of New Zealand. The FAO broad definition includesplantations p such as rubberwood and cork oak stands. Under this framework, cacao and coffee plantations, despite their growing environmental damage, fall into the forest category. This conflation allows countries like the Republic of Congo, whose economies heavily depend on cocoa exports, to clear native forests for plantations while claiming that no deforestation has occurred.

The conflation also hinders efforts to track the rate of deforestation, but also manage forests globally. Take the voluntary carbon market as an example. In order for the market to function, the carbon credit, which comes from protected forests to compensate for emissions made elsewhere, needs to be mutually interchangeable. A high-quality credit from a protected forest should hold the same value, regardless of where it is generated. However, since not every country regards plantations as forests, we cannot evaluate the carbon credits that they generate against a unified definition of forests, making the credit transfer process unnecessarily complex.

Disparate forest definitions also complicate trade policies, the European Union introduced its new deforestation regulations to limit the EU market´s impact on deforestation and biodiversity. Under these regulations, any businesses selling commodities on the EU market must be able to prove that the products do not originate from recently deforested land or have not contributed to forest degradation. Yet, plantations are not explicitly excluded, leaving loopholes for exploitation. The lack of clarity allows unscrupulous actors to label environmentally harmful plantations as forests, thereby skirting regulatory scrutiny.

So why have we not excluded plantations from forest definitions? One plausible explanation is the economic convenience of labeling plantations as forests. In the Global South, plantation economies, in particular cocoa and coffee plantations, can create new employment opportunities and build new centers of cash crop production out of native forests, thereby contributing to the livelihoods of local farmers. The Global North benefits from a steady supply of cheap raw materials. Even if we are well aware of the environmental and social damage of industrial plantations, the benefits to both exporting and importing states because of this economic symbiosis makes upending the current global trade system a Herculean task.

Another possible reason for maintaining that plantations are forests is that not all plantations are harmful to the environment. If we were to adopt the practice of growing multiple tree species on plantations – whether they produce cocoa or not — then the aesthetic, wildlife habitat, biological diversity, and other services of a normal forest can still be guaranteed. Regardless of the benefits promised by multi-species plantations, most of the world´s plantations are unfortunately mono-species today. In Europe, mono-species plantations are traditionally favored, largely derived from European experience in trying to domesticate their indigenous species. It is also such monoculture plantations that damage the soil and threaten biodiversity the most.

In simple terms, our current forest definitions are unsustainable. Including industrial plantations and natural forests in the same category is not sustainable. It is time for a narrowed-down, unambiguous forest definition that excludes plantations clearly and directly. Only then can we achieve a more consistent and reliable quantification of forests. Only then can we monitor carbon sequestration with higher precision. Only then can we coordinate international efforts to protect forests and make more effective conservation agreements related to greenhouse gas emissions, climate change, and biodiversity. Hopefully even as soon as today, as the nations gather for COP29.