Highland Birchwoods

World needs to restore forests ‘even without climate change

12 July 2010

The world would still need to take urgent action to restore its lost and degraded forests even if the climate were not changing, an international forestry conference has heard.
However, climate change made the problem of forest loss and degradation even more urgent, Tim Rollinson, Director-general of the British Forestry Commission, told the 18th Commonwealth Forestry Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Deforestation is the second-biggest source of the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change. However, in his concluding speech, Mr Rollinson noted that the conference had heard many examples of the serious problems that forest loss and degradation cause in addition to helping to cause climate change.
These included water supplies drying up – even to the point where hydro-electric power stations can cease to operate – and crop failures, fuel shortages, flooding, drought, loss of species and community stress. Poor people who depend on forests for high proportions of their livelihoods are invariably the worst affected.
The conference also heard a number of examples from around the world where forest restoration projects had reversed the fortunes of local communities. Water and fuel supplies had been revived, soil fertility had improved, wildlife had returned, the ability to grow crops and keep farm animals had improved, floods and droughts had decreased I number and severity, and the forests supported a wide range of subsistence and commercial enterprises.
However, Mr Rollinson added,
“It is worth reminding ourselves that forest restoration is not just simply a matter of planting trees.
“It is about restoring the functionality of ecosystem services, restoring whole landscapes, improving lives and empowering people to shape a sustainable future for themselves.
“Ultimately, it is about sustaining life on Earth, and communities supported by healthy trees and forests are better able to cope with the changes that climate change is going to bring, such as hotter temperatures, more floods and droughts, and storms of greater number and severity.”
The conference final session also heard from Pavan Sukhdev, Study Leader of a major international study into The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB). He said governments and businesses were increasingly recognising the true cash value of “ecosystem services” such as those provided by forests, and the costs of damaging and restoring them.
Ecosystem services include things such as fresh water, fresh air, clean soil, flood and drought prevention and mitigation, biodiversity, and supplies of food and other products.
This meant that in evaluating proposals for exploiting natural resources, the financial costs of losing or damaging those services and restoring them later were increasingly being taken into account. This was enabling a different economic view to prevail that made avoidance, mitigation and restoration of damage financially worthwhile.
The proceedings of the conference will be published on its website, www.cfc2010.org within the next few weeks.