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Climate change will damage forests, creating hardship for rural communities mongabay.com November 28, 2008
The report, issued by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), calls for the implementation of adaptation measures to reduce the vulnerability of forests and forest-dependent communities to wildfires, drought, flooding, disease, and other environmental challenges. "If they are managed properly, forests can greatly assist vulnerable communities adapt to the impacts of climate change, yet if they are not managed sustainably, forests will exacerbate these impacts," said CIFOR in a statement. "Similarly, because of their ability to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, forests have the potential to be a big part of the solution to climate change. However, if forests are destroyed, the increasing amount of carbon in the atmosphere could lead to the destruction of what remains." The report, titled Facing an Uncertain Future: How Forests and People can Adapt to Climate Change, argues that forests are "critical to the ability of human societies to adapt to climate change" and should be treated accordingly in international climate negotiations. "The imperative to assist forests and forest communities to adapt to climate change has been poorly addressed in national policies and international negotiations. The adaptation challenge is being treated as secondary to mitigation, and yet the two are inextricably linked," said Frances Seymour, Director General of CIFOR. The report identifies two adaptation responses: (1) adapting forest management and conservation to reduce the impacts of climate change on forest ecosystems and (2) helping the people who are managing, living in or conserving forests to adapt to future changes. "We have identified two broad categories of adaptation measures for forest ecosystems," said Bruno Locatelli, a CIFOR scientist and lead author of the report. "The first is to buffer ecosystems against climate-related disturbances like improving fire management to reduce the risk of uncontrolled wildfires or the control of invasive species. In plantations, we can select species that are better suited to coping with the predicted changes in climate. The second would help forests to evolve towards new states better suited to the altered climate. In this way we evolve with the changing climate rather than resist it." In developing its recommendations, the authors of the report reviewed the scientific literature on the effects of climate change on forests. The highlights (excerpted from CIFOR):
Tags: adaptation to climate change adaptation impact of climate change forests climate change poverty alleviation forest people fires drought forest fires forestry flooding environment green News index | RSS | News Feed | Twitter | Home Advertisements: Organic Apparel from Patagonia | Insect-repelling clothing
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