- ➔ With the world facing escalating threats, forests provide solutions to global challenges. This publication provides updates on the world’s forests and examines innovations for scaling up forest conservation, restoration and sustainable use.
The world is facing mounting threats on multiple fronts, and time is running out to take the action needed to avert them. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at its heart, envisions a world free of poverty, hunger, disease and want and where all life can thrive. But urgent action is required if we are to achieve the SDGs.
Increased emissions of greenhouse gases have caused widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere; the global surface temperature in 2011–2020 was 1.1 °C higher than temperatures in 1850–1900.1 Human-caused climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in all regions, leading to widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damage to nature and people. Vulnerable communities who have historically contributed the least to current climate change are being affected disproportionately.1 Human actions threaten more species with global extinction now than ever before. An average of around 25 percent of species in assessed animal and plant groups are threatened, suggesting that about 1 million species already face extinction, many within decades, unless action is taken to reduce the intensity of drivers of biodiversity loss.2
Forests and trees offer cost-effective solutions to the climate and biodiversity crises, and they are integral to the transformation to MORE efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable agrifood systems for better production, better nutrition, a better environment and a better life, leaving no one behind (Box 1). Halting deforestation and forest degradation can reduce global greenhouse-gas emissions, and forest and landscape restoration (FLR) can remove carbon from the atmosphere. Carbon can also be stored in long-lived wood products. Forests do more for the climate than store and sequester carbon, providing dramatic global cooling through evapotranspiration and via their physical structure and chemistry.3 This bonus mitigation is complemented by the ability of forests to regulate rainfall and stabilize local climates, helping minimize extreme weather and making forests essential for climate-change adaptation and resilience.3 Forests harbour most of Earth’s terrestrial biodiversity: for example, they provide habitats for about 80 percent of amphibian species, 75 percent of bird species and 68 percent of mammal species.4 Forests and trees make significant contributions to human food security and nutrition, and agroforestry can increase farmer incomes and the resilience of farming systems and improve agricultural productivity.5 Forests also contribute in multiple ways to the resilience of communities and livelihoods to threats and crises and to resolving the underlying causes of food insecurity, malnutrition and poverty. They are sources of woodfuel for cooking, wild foods, fodder and materials for shelter; they conserve water resources and provide other ecosystem services; and they buffer extreme weather conditions.6
Box 1Forestry and agrifood systems transformation
Forests and trees are essential components of agrifood systems. The removal of forest cover, especially in the tropics, increases local temperatures and disrupts rainfall patterns in ways that compound the local effects of global climate change, with potentially severe consequences for agricultural productivity.3 Forests provide essential habitat for much of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity, which is key for local livelihoods and the resilience of agrifood systems.7 Wild-harvested forest foods are important for the food security and nutrition of many forest-adjacent people, especially in remote areas in the tropics and subtropics and when agricultural production falls, such as during drought.8 Agroforestry and other diversified production systems tend to be more resilient than conventional agriculture to environmental shocks and can increase food security and nutrition, as well as crop productivity.8 Enhancing the benefits of forests for agriculture through forest conservation, restoration and sustainable use is fundamental for the transformation to MORE efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable agrifood systems for better production, better nutrition, a better environment and a better life, leaving no one behind.
The need for innovation in the forest sector
The rapid pace of change, and the urgency of addressing global challenges, demand inventive solutions that are diverse, flexible and adaptable and can be scaled up quickly. It is imperative, therefore, to tap into human creativity and embrace innovation, including in the forest sector.
Recognition of the importance of innovation in all its forms – technological, social, policy, institutional and financial – for the conservation, restoration and sustainable use of forests, trees and associated ecosystems is gaining traction globally. In 2022, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) adopted its first-ever Science and Innovation Strategy9 to reinforce the use of science and innovation in FAO’s technical interventions and normative guidance. The strategy, which was endorsed by the FAO Council at its 170th Session following an inclusive and transparent consultation process, defines innovation as “doing something new and different whether solving an old problem in a new way, addressing a new problem with a proven solution, or bringing a new solution to a new problem.”a The Science and Innovation Strategy is a key tool for the implementation of the FAO Strategic Framework 2022–31.10 Its broad and inclusive scope emphasizes the need for transdisciplinarity to consider all scientific disciplines and collaboration between scientists and non-academic stakeholders, as well as all types of innovation, including those stemming from the knowledge of Indigenous Peoples and small-scale producers.
The 26th Session of the FAO Committee on Forestry11 recognized the potential of forests to help address the impacts of global challenges, including through three interrelated pathways.b It invited FAO to engage with Members and the public and private sectors on sustainable development in its three dimensionsc and to foster science and innovation.
