The importance of forests in climate change, biodiversity and desertification/land degradation

Forests cover approximately 30 per cent of the Earth’s land surface and provide important ecosystem goods and services, including food, fodder, water, shelter, nutrient cycling, air purification, and cultural and recreational amenities. Forests also store carbon, provide habitat for a wide range of species and help alleviate land degradation and desertification.

In this paper, we present an intensification model based on the intensity of exploitation and use of forests and forest lands as a relevant framework for analysing the appearance, dynamics, and evolution of different types of secondary forests. The systematic driving forces responsible for the disturbances and subsequent secondary forest re growth tend to change and evolve along this continuum.

This manual provides methods for the development and evaluation of criteria and indicators (C&I) which can then be used to assess the sustainability of forest management. The manual is written primarily for researchers, people or groups interested in evaluating C&I for assessments of forests in new areas, or as a reference for readers wanting to know how CIFOR's Generic Template was produced. The methods presented are aimed at the development of sets of C&I for natural forest at the forest management unit level, especially in the tropics.

Between 2005 and 2009, the EU-financed project ForLive set out to analyse promising local forest management initiatives in the Amazon Basin in four countries: Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, and Peru. Researchers aimed to identify locally viable practices that benefit livelihoods and ecological stabilisation of landscapes, as well as to define ways to promote these practices as a basis for sound rural development. This book presents lessons learnt from more than 100 studies by researchers from Latin America, from practitioners and from local families themselves.

Au Burkina Faso, l’aménagement des forêts naturelles a pour principaux objectifs l’exploitation du bois de feu et du pâturage. Il concerne également des activités secondaires tels que la chasse et le développement du tourisme de vision. Ces activités se concentrent principalement dans les régions de l’Ouest, du Sud et de l’Est dont les ressources forestières sont encore relativement abondantes. L’objectif de cette étude est de faire une analyse critique sur les approches et les technologies existantes sur l’aménagement des forêts naturelles.

Dipterocarps are one of the best known and commercially important groups of tropical trees. They preside over some of the most magnificent forest formations in the world. Exploitation of dipterocarp-dominated tropical rain forests has expanded rapidly in the past 20 years. Efforts to develop and implement sustainable management practices are being intensified and there is a pressing need for high quality information on which to base management decisions and reorient research.

Indonesia has extensive areas of post extraction secondary forests and degraded lands arising from intensive exploitation of forest resources in recent decades. Using the area of forests resulting from selective logging practices as an estimate, in year 2000, post extraction secondary forests covered about 23 million ha, or about 55% of the total concession area.

In tropical forests, RIL has been tested and appliedon a small scale for more than a decade. Various timber-producing countries in Asia and the Pacific have recognized its potential for advancing sustainable forest management. Yet many questions remain and the lack of sound and appropriate information continues to impede the widespread application of RIL. This book helps fill that critical information gap.