Instead of acting as a kind of savings account to be chopped down and monetised when required, the standing forest could become a source of income.

At the moment, standing forest is of little commercial value, and much of it continues to exist only because of laws intended to prevent total clearance of the land.

Based on the comprehensiveness of forest coverage rate, total standing forest stock, average forest volume, a new indicator called 'Forest Thickness'(FT) is put forward in this paper.