Co Benefits Of Sustainable Forestry

Tropical rain forests are increasingly expected to serve for climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation amid global climate change and increasing human demands for land. Natural production forests that are legally designated to produce timber occur widely in the Southeast Asian tropics. Synergizing timber production, climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation in such tropical production forests is one of the most realistic means to resolve these contemporary global problems. Next-generation sustainable forest management is being practiced in the natural tropical rain forest of a model site in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, while earlier sustainable management practices have generally failed, leading to extensive deforestation and forest degradation elsewhere in the tropics. Ecologists have examined co-benefits of sustainable forestry in the model forest in terms of forest regeneration, carbon sequestration and biodiversity in comparison to a forest managed by destructive conventional methods. Taxonomic groups studied have included trees, decomposers, soil microbes, insects and mammals. A wide array of field methods and technology has been used including count plots, sensor cameras, and satellite remote-sensing. This book is a compilation of the results of those thorough ecological investigations and elucidates ecological processes of tropical rain forests after logging. The book furnishes useful information for foresters and conservation NGOs, and it also provides baseline information for biologists and ecologists. A further aim is to examine the environmental effects of a forest certification scheme as the model forest has been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. Taken as a whole, this book proves that the desired synergy is possible.

Tropical rain forests are increasingly expected to serve for climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation amid global climate change and increasing human demands for land. Natural production forests that are legally designated to produce timber occur widely in the Southeast Asian tropics. Synergizing timber production, climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation in such tropical production forests is one of the most realistic means to resolve these contemporary global problems. Next-generation sustainable forest management is being practiced in the natural tropical rain forest of a model site in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, while earlier sustainable management practices have generally failed, leading to extensive deforestation and forest degradation elsewhere in the tropics. Ecologists have examined co-benefits of sustainable forestry in the model forest in terms of forest regeneration, carbon sequestration and biodiversity in comparison to a forest managed by destructive conventional methods. Taxonomic groups studied have included trees, decomposers, soil microbes, insects and mammals. A wide array of field methods and technology has been used including count plots, sensor cameras, and satellite remote-sensing. This book is a compilation of the results of those thorough ecological investigations and elucidates ecological processes of tropical rain forests after logging. The book furnishes useful information for foresters and conservation NGOs, and it also provides baseline information for biologists and ecologists. A further aim is to examine the environmental effects of a forest certification scheme as the model forest has been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. Taken as a whole, this book proves that the desired synergy is possible.

A global assessment of potential and anticipated impacts of efforts to achieve the SDGs on forests and related socio-economic systems. This title is available as Open Access via Cambridge Core.

From recycled products to organic food, the movement to be "environmentally friendly" is now expanding into the forestry field. Recognizing this impact, Home Depot has committed to giving preference to selling "certified wood," proven to come from forests that meet certain biological and social sustainablility standards. Retailers and vendors can o

The interactions between climate change adaptation and mitigation are particularly evident in agriculture, forestry and other land-use-based activities. Adaptation projects can affect ecosystems and their ability to sequester and store carbon, while mitigation projects can enhance adaptive capacity or increase the vulnerability of people. These interactions must be considered when designing policies and strategies. The discussion on policy integration of climate change adaptation and mitigation should focus on two issues: (1) integrating adaptation and mitigation in climate change policies to consider multiple goals, assess trade-offs and seek mutually supportive outcomes; and (2) integrating adaptation and mitigation jointly into sectoral policies, such as agriculture or forestry, in order to balance trade-offs and maximize co-benefits between climate change and other objectives. National strategies and plans related to climate change in Peru as well as key land-use policies encompass both adaptation and mitigation objectives. Frameworks have been developed for the integrated implementation of adaptation and mitigation in the new National Climate Change Strategy and draft National Forests and Climate Change Strategy. Although most of the other strategies and action plans do not mention the joint implementation of adaptation and mitigation, they do emphasis delivery of ecosystem services. And enhancing ecosystem services can ultimately benefit both adaptation and mitigation and other national priorities. What is needed is a strong focus on information and knowledge generation and management and an assessment of the current and potential impacts of national and subnational policies on ecosystem services at different scales. Establishing mechanisms for monitoring and evaluating policy implementation, stakeholder engagement and adaptive management are also crucial.

A major challenge in trading ecosystem services is the need to quantify and commoditise services, for monitoring and verification as well as for trade. This is relatively straightforward for goods such as forest honey or shade-grown coffee, but potentially complex for services such as water purification, reducing risk from floods or other disasters or carbon sequestration. Developing certification systems for forest ecosystem services is one potential way to define, quantify and verify these services in a way that buyers can trust, and this is why certification of ecosystem services is promoted by a number of environmental and forestry NGOs. Certification of ecosystem services is a useful concept, but many practical and theoretical obstacles must be addressed before it can be put into practice. This paper is a review of existing development in certification of ecosystem services, with information useful for designing and implementing projects to evaluate the efficacy of new systems. We discuss the potential use of more holistic concepts for measuring management sustainability, which are to date undeveloped and untested, and recommend developing pilot projects that are specifically designed to address a number of challenges inherent to ecosystem service certification.

One of the highest priorities for human societies in the 21st century, under the challenges of predicted great environmental changes, is to conserve all kinds of biodiversity across the planet. Among all the biota that exist on Earth, forest ecosystems demonstrate a high degree of biodiversity, being thought to comprise the most diverse ecosystems, as most of the terrestrial species in the world dwell in these ecosystems. Forest biodiversity is interlinked to a web of socio-economic factors, providing an array of goods and services that range from timber and non-timber forest resources to mitigating climate change and conservation of genetic resources; therefore, it is innately linked to ecosystems and human well-being. However, in recent decades, the decrease in forest biodiversity has been a crucial and ongoing environmental issue that needs special attention and adapted ecosystem management. This Special Issue book on forest biodiversity (FB) includes a selected number of research works from all over the world dealing with emerging issues, for understanding FB and its needs for conservation, ecological processes, disturbances, climate change and ecosystems resilience, structural complexity and ecosystem functions, ecological theories and silvicultural practices, and ecosystems stability. More specifically, it includes papers focused on the indicators and methods for assessing and monitoring forest biodiversity, evaluation of practices, planting and silvicultural treatments, and management and monitoring methods, with an overall goal to provide new insights on forest biodiversity conservation, conservation of forest biodiversity in protected areas, treatments of endangered or threatened forest habitats, and sustainable management of forest resources.