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Book (stand-alone)Technical bookThe status of Mediterranean forests 2025 2025
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No results found.The Mediterranean region faces mounting challenges from climate change, population growth and persistent inequalities especially affecting youth and women. A sustainable transition is urgently needed to promote low-carbon, inclusive growth while safeguarding ecological integrity and resilience. Regional cooperation, education reform and robust monitoring are key to this transformation.Forests and wooded lands cover 28 percent of the region, with croplands and grasslands dominating. Forest area within Mediterranean countries grew by 12 percent between 1990 and 2020, but gains have slowed and requires enhanced sustainable forest management. Climate change is accelerating threats, such as wildfires, droughts, pests and land degradation, while land-use trends diverge across subregions.Restoration is gaining momentum, with 80 million hectares identified for potential recovery. Between 2017 and 2022, up to 2.3 million hectares were put under restoration under the Agadir Commitment. Restoration efforts increasingly integrate local communities, diverse species and traditional knowledge. However, long-term funding, monitoring and ecological planning remain limited.Wildfires in the region are intensifying, with an average of about 1 600 fires burning almost 400 000 hectares annually. Western Mediterranean countries are normally the most affected, in terms of both number of fires and area burned. Integrated fire management, including prevention, post-fire restoration and regional cooperation, is essential.Urban expansion, projected to grow by 160 percent by 2030, calls for better management of urban and peri-urban forests, which offer vital ecosystem services and social benefits. Governance must reflect the unique urban–rural interface.Effective forest management depends on integrated monitoring systems. Strengthening data collection, leveraging technologies, and fostering collaboration especially with local communities, will be critical to tracking progress and guiding sustainable action. -
No Thumbnail AvailableDocumentFAO journalNon-thematic issue 1999This issue of Unasylva contains, as promised in the previous edition, additional articles on sustainable mountain development. These articles help to complete the focus on the topic and should also help to promote interest in the recently declared International Year of the Mountain (2000) for which FAO has been designated lead agency status within the United Nations system.
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Book (stand-alone)Technical bookThe key role of forest and landscape restoration in climate action 2022
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No results found.Forest and land degradation affects almost 2 billion hectares (ha) of land and threatens the livelihoods, well-being, food, water and energy security of nearly 3.2 billion people. Forest and landscape restoration (FLR) is a relatively recent response to address these impacts and aims to recover the ecological functionality and enhance human well-being in deforested and degraded landscapes. Forest and landscape restoration practices have also proven to have significant benefits for addressing the impacts of climate change. These include carbon sequestration and reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, improving the resilience of landscapes and reducing disaster risks. Forest and landscape restoration is therefore one of the key solutions of the agriculture, forestry and other land-use (AFOLU) sector considered in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), confirmed in the Glasgow’s Declaration on Forest and Land during the twenty-sixth UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP26). This publication highlights the links between FLR and climate change mitigation and adaptation issues, and considers further opportunities to enable greater integration between the two agendas. Many large restoration initiatives have been launched in the last decade. More projects are under preparation through the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, including many projects of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). These projects, often funded under the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and other climate funds are emphasized in the report to illustrate the numerous climate benefits of FLR. As a relatively cost-effective approach to supporting carbon sequestration, conservation and sustainable forest use, FLR is playing an active role in enabling climate mitigation. Should the Bonn Challenge reach its goal to restore 350 million ha, it could sequester up to 1.7 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide (Gt CO2) per year. Reduction of GHG emissions is also crucial, and the FLR approach provides a strong basis to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, especially through Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) activities. It can also support sustainable bioenergy, in particular the wood energy sector, a large contributor of GHGs. Forest and landscape restoration is also key for supporting the conservation of existing forests and landscapes to protect and enhance carbon already stored in ecosystems, such as those in peatlands. This publication describes the different tools that have been developed by FAO to better measure the quantities of carbon stored and other climate benefits achieved through FLR projects.
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