The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation on Monday advised countries in the Near East and North Africa to plant more trees to improve the quality of water and increase food production.
"Although forest cover is low, afforestation and green landscaping are gaining ground in the Near East, despite harsh climatic conditions," Hosny El-Lakany, FAO Assistant Director-General for Forestry, said.
In a statement coinciding with the start of a five-day meeting of experts in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, he noted that "planted trees not only help the region to have better quality water but trees serve as windbreaks and shelter-belts against desertification."
Forest cover in the region amounts to around 110 million hectares, equivalent to 5.9 percent of the total land area.
But Sudan accounts for more than half the total forested area and in other countries forests on average cover less than three percent of the land.
The overall forest cover in the region declined by nearly one million hectares a year in the last decade and six countries recorded a drop in forest cover.
The FAO estimates that about 8.3 million hectares, around 5.5 percent of the total forested area in the Near East, consists of trees which have been planted, and that almost half of them are in Iran or Turkey.
Increasingly, countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates and Yemen are using treated waste water to irrigate forest plantations and greenbelts.
"The FAO encourages such water use, which poses lower health risks and is socially and environmentally more acceptable than its use for agriculture," the statement said.
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