IUFRO: President's Letter to Members and Officeholders

Eugene Golovesov, Unsplash

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11 December 2023

From:
Dr. John Parrotta, IUFRO President
IUFRO Headquarters – Secretariat

To:
IUFRO Members and IUFRO Officeholders

Subject:    
Circular letter by the IUFRO President


Dear colleagues,

I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere appreciation for your continued support of IUFRO during this past year. Thanks to the commitment and initiative of our Members and voluntary Officeholders, and of course the dedication and leadership provided by the IUFRO Headquarters "Dream Team" in Vienna, we have much to show for our work in 2023.

The IUFRO network continues to provide a vital platform for global scientific exchange in all fields of forest science and its application for a more sustainable world. Our many activities this past year have included a variety of in-person, online and hybrid meetings, workshops, capacity-building courses, publications, podcasts, and other networking events organized by our Members and Officeholders in IUFRO Divisional units and Task Forces, as well as IUFRO's Special Programmes and Projects. The importance of interdisciplinary and intersectoral collaboration was a major theme highlighted in many events, including two regional meetings convened in Dehradun, India (in March) and Curitiba, Brazil (in September) that focused on the role of science in building sustainable, resilient landscapes for the benefit of people and nature.

IUFRO continues to play a highly visible role on the world stage through our engagement in a number of policy fora including the UN Forum on Forests, and our active involvement in the Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF). Under IUFRO's leadership, the Global Forest Expert Panels Initiative - coordinated by IUFRO's newly established Science-Policy Programme – produced a major global scientific assessment on Forests and Human Health, launched on the International Day of Forests on 21 March.

IUFRO's many partnerships with inter-governmental, governmental, private sector and non-governmental institutions, continue to thrive. TEAMING UP 4 FORESTS, a Science-Business Platform initiated with the Mondi Group in 2021 to better understand climate change impacts on forests and identify response measures in line with the Sustainable Development Goals, organized several important activities in 2023. A new IUFRO-led project - WOOD for GLOBE - a collaborative effort with FAO and the Centre for Bioeconomy of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU), with support from the Austrian Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Regions and Water Management (BML), aims at creating a global wood policy platform to support the use of sustainable wood for a carbon-neutral bioeconomy worldwide.

The 2023 IUFRO Board meeting, hosted by the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE) in Dehradun, India on 27-28 March 2023 was historic, yielding a number of decisions critical to advancing our post-2020 Strategy and strategic goals. These included recommendations (subsequently approved by IUFRO's International Council) for: (1) the host of the 2029 IUFRO World Congress, to be held for the first time on the African continent, in Nairobi, Kenya, and (2) the membership of the IUFRO Board for the 2024-2029 term beginning at the end of June. The new Board will be significantly more balanced in terms of gender and regional/cultural representation and led by the first female President in IUFRO's 132-year history, Prof. Daniela Kleinschmit from the University of Freiburg, Germany.

Looking ahead to 2024, preparations for the upcoming XXVI IUFRO World Congress "Forests & Society Towards 2050" in Stockholm are well advanced. This Congress presents an opportunity to showcase the many roles that forest science and our diverse global forest science community play in optimizing the contributions of forests to the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals, the 2050 vision of Living in Harmony with Nature of the Convention on Biological Diversity, and to meeting the critical climate target of zero net emissions. The tireless dedication and enthusiasm of the Congress Organizing Committee, the Congress Scientific Committee, IUFRO Headquarters, and the hundreds of IUFRO Officeholders who have been involved in the organization of the scientific program, guarantees that this will be a fantastic Congress. I and our Swedish hosts and partners in the Nordic and Baltic region look forward to welcoming you to Stockholm in June 2024.

I wish you and your families all the very best during this holiday season, and a happy, healthy, peaceful, and fulfilling New Year ahead.


With warm regards and best wishes,

John Parrotta
IUFRO President