Commonwealth Forests

bullet1 Chapter 2: Sustainable forest management
bullet2 FOREST MANAGEMENT

bullet3 Forest Landscape Restoration - the bigger picture

A further development, in which Commonwealth countries are playing a part, is the idea of Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR), which urges us to “see the bigger picture” and puts forest and woodland in the context of the wider landscape.  FLR, which has been promoted by IUCN and WWF, means restoring the goods, services and ecological processes that forests can provide at the broader landscape level rather than solely promoting increased tree cover at a particular location http://www.iucn.org/themes/fcp/.htm .   The elements of FLR include:

  1. Restoring the benefits of the forest to people in terms of products and services, at the same time as the environmental functions of forests;

  2. Connecting forest fragments between protected and well-managed forest areas;

  3. Reducing the vulnerability of forests to threats (such as pests or fires or climate change);

  4. Planning, identifying and addressing solutions acceptable to all and the root causes of forest loss and degradation; and

  5. Valuing forest goods and services in order to quantify and evaluate how stakeholders can benefit from them.

The Forest Landscape Restoration Implementation Workshop was hosted by Brazil in Petrópolis in April 2005, organized by the Global Partnership on Forest Landscape Restoration – a network of governments, organizations, communities and individuals.  Over one hundred participants from a wide range of backgrounds shared knowledge of good practices and opportunities in forest landscape restoration, to stimulate political support and to demonstrate its implementation around the world.  

The workshop concluded with the agreement on the Petrópolis Challenge, which defined FLR as “a vehicle for delivering internationally agreed commitments on forests, biodiversity, climate change and desertification”, and noted its key role in achieving the Millennium Development Goals. The Challenge noted that there is no blueprint for successful forest landscape restoration, but highlighted examples of its role in restoring key goods and services in degraded or deforested lands to improve livelihoods in several countries. For more information see: http://www.unep-wcmc.org/forest/restoration/globalpartnership