6:22 a.m.
De : IUFRO Headquarters [mailto:office@iufro.org]
Envoyé : mardi 11 juin 2019 17:47
À : Dear IUFRO Officeholder <sandra.luque(a)irstea.fr>
Objet : IUFRO Congress Spotlight #67 - Tapping the potential of restoring disturbed
tropical forests
IUFRO Congress Spotlight #67 - Tapping the potential of restoring disturbed tropical
forests
IUFRO Spotlight issues up to September 2019 will primarily focus on the XXV IUFRO World
Congress that will take place on 29 September-5 October 2019 in Curitiba, Brazil.
Individual Congress sessions will be highlighted in order to draw attention to the broader
Congress themes, the wide variety of topics that will be addressed at the Congress and
their importance on a regional and global scale.
Visit the Congress website at http://iufro2019.com/ or
https://www.iufro.org/events/congresses/2019/.
Tapping the potential of restoring disturbed tropical forests
PDF for download
<https://www.iufro.org/fileadmin/material/publications/spotlights/congress-spotlight67-disturbed-tropical-forests.pdf>
Secondary forests in Costa Rica. Photo: Geoffrey Venegas, CATIE.
Since the 1980s most deforestation globally has occurred in tropical countries – Africa,
South America and Asia. The high rate of deforestation and degradation contributes to the
disappearance of 13 million hectares of tropical forests each year.
The effects of deforestation have, over time, led to immense areas of secondary and
degraded forests.
This fall, at the 2019 IUFRO World Congress in Curitiba, Brazil a session entitled: Will
active restoration of Secondary and Degraded Forests (SDFs) help to address sustainably
the gap between wood demand and supply? will examine ways to address the challenge of
restoration in secondary and degraded tropical forests.
The session, organized by Dr. Marie Ange Ngo Bieng and Dr. Plinio Sist, of CIRAD (Dr. Sist
is also Coordinator of IUFRO's Research Group Tropical and Subtropical Silviculture)
and Dr. Bryan Finegan of CATIE, (and Deputy Coordinator of IUFRO's Forest Biodiversity
Research Group) will focus on restoring SDFs as a way to protect the remaining natural
tropical forests and also as a way to address the growing gap between wood demand and
supply in a sustainable fashion.
There are several partly overlapping definitions of secondary and degraded forests.
Secondary forests are forests regenerating largely through natural processes after
significant human and-or natural disturbance resulting in major differences in forest
structure and-or species composition with respect to nearby primary forests on similar
sites. More generally, a degraded forest delivers a reduced supply of goods and services
from a given site and maintains only limited biological diversity.
The reasons for concentrating on tropical forest restoration are simple, Dr. Ngo Bieng
said. Tropical forests are both crucial and endangered. They account for nearly half of
the world's forest ecosystems – 1,770 million hectares. They draw in carbon dioxide
and emit oxygen and have, for good reason, been called the "lungs of the
planet".
Some 50-70% of species living in terrestrial environments are housed in those forests,
which play a crucial role in providing, among other things, vital ecosystem services,
drinking water, and woody and non-timber forest products.
And about 2/3 of that forest area is considered SDF, so restoring and utilizing SDFs in
sustainable, productive ways makes a lot of sense.
"SDFs supply firewood and non-wood forest products but have rarely been considered
for their potential for timber production," Dr. Ngo Bieng said. "Although they
have been heavily exploited in the past and currently are very poor in terms of commercial
timber stocks, growing commercial timber trees in SDFs is possible, though variable,
depending on local conditions.
"But," she went on, "these tropical SDFs could contribute more to timber
supply and forest environmental services. We propose concepts for sustainable timber
production in SDFs in the tropics. It adds value to these types of often-neglected
forests."
Dr. Ngo Bieng said their session will look at three main things:
* the increase in future wood demand worldwide and the related urgent need to find
alternative sustainable wood sources;
* the potential of SDFs in that context and the current challenges related to wood
production in tropical SDFs in different countries; and
* case studies of active restoration associated with successful wood production and
commercialization of timber in SDFs for higher value end products.
The session organizers recognize that there are significant challenges between them and a
successful restoration initiative. Among them: re-establishing productive forest systems
where there are serious biophysical limitations; initiating relevant silvicultural
practices for effective restoration; weak institutional frameworks and-or a lack of
sectoral policies; and competing visions of how the landscape should be used.
Dr. Ngo Bieng is hopeful that the "international context" which has underlined
an increasing demand for wood products can provide opportunities to move forward. The
increase in demand for wood calls for sustainable alternative wood production.
"The remaining logged and production forests will not, by themselves, be able to
fulfill the increased demand for tropical wood products while also playing a major role in
providing environmental services," she said.
"We urgently need alternative sustainable wood sources."
She noted that her colleague, Dr. Sist, is involved in the Tropical managed Forests
Observatory (TmFO) initiative. "It's a pan-tropical network examining the
long-term effects of logging on tropical forest ecosystems.
"Their findings will provide policy-makers and foresters guidance in sustainable
forest management and conservation of tropical forests. That knowledge will certainly be
useful for the future management of productive SDFs," she said.
See you at the IUFRO 2019 World Congress!
Visit http://iufro2019.com/ * Look out for #IUFRO2019
<https://twitter.com/hashtag/iufro2019?f=tweets&vertical=default&src=hash>
on Twitter and XXV IUFRO World Congress 2019
<https://www.facebook.com/events/1881111872132294/> on Facebook!
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IUFRO Spotlight is an initiative of the International Union of Forest Research
Organizations. Its aim is to introduce, in a timely fashion, significant findings in
forest research from IUFRO member organizations and/or involving IUFRO officeholders to a
worldwide network of decision makers, policy makers and researchers.
The findings reported here are submitted by IUFRO Member Organizations. IUFRO is pleased
to highlight and circulate these findings to a broad audience but, in doing so, acts only
as a conduit. The quality and accuracy of the reports are the responsibility of the member
organization and the authors.
Suggestions for reports and findings that could be promoted through IUFRO Spotlight are
encouraged. To be considered, reports should be fresh, have policy implications and be
applicable to more than one country. If you would like to have a publication highlighted
by Spotlight, contact: Gerda Wolfrum, wolfrum(at)iufro.org
<mailto:wolfrum@iufro.org> .
The International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) is the only worldwide
organization devoted to forest research and related sciences. Its members are research
institutions, universities, and individual scientists as well as decision-making
authorities and other stakeholders with a focus on forests and trees. Visit:
https://www.iufro.org/
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IUFRO Congress Spotlight #67 published in June 2019
by IUFRO Headquarters, Vienna, Austria.
Available for download at: https://www.iufro.org/media/iufro-spotlights/
Contact the editor at office(at)iufro.org <mailto:wolfrum@iufro.org> or visit
https://www.iufro.org/ <https://www.iufro.org/?id=104>
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