Scaling up sustainability: time for forestry to come out of the forest

Peter Holmgren in the Guardian (UK): Ending deforestation has been a political goal for decades, even centuries – an unmet ambition up there with finding world peace and eradicating global hunger. The challenge has received increased attention in the past five years because of climate change and the fact that forests keep massive stores of carbon away from the atmosphere.

The UN-backed scheme known as REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, plus the conservation and enhancement of forest carbon stocks), could see relatively large payments made to keep that carbon in the forests. As a consequence, a significant part of international forestry efforts has recently been focused on this one objective. Using forests to offset human-induced climate change is an admirable aim, and it is likely that other forestry objectives, such as conserving biological diversity, would benefit from this as well. But this focus has become almost myopic. We must not neglect the greater potential of forestry to contribute to questions of economic and human development.

Forestry is not an isolated sector disconnected from the world beyond the trees. For local people, the forest is a source of renewable energy, food and livelihoods. Results released last year from a six-year study by the Center for International Forestry Research, show that forest income, on average, constitutes more than one-fifth of total household income for people living in or near forests. This includes wood for fuel and construction, bushmeat, edible and medicinal plants. Forest products also contribute significantly to global business and trade; wood and non-wood forest products constitute 4% of global trade in commodities. Forests also provide environmental services that are critical for sustaining life, such as biodiversity and of course climate regulation through carbon storage. While REDD+ has helped raise awareness about this latter service, there is surprisingly limited debate around the ways in which the combined benefits of forestry add up to make a weighty contribution to global sustainable development solutions.

Conservation of forests is often seen to be in opposition to economic development. However, conservation, land use and development are unequivocally linked and by combining them rather than pitting them against each other, we can build comprehensive solutions rather than 'either-or' scenarios....

Snow-covered rafts of timber being floated to Kaukas Paper Mills in Lappeenranta, Finland. The floating takes place on Lake Saimaa. Shot by Petritap, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license