While growing awareness of climate change has placed increased importance on the role of forests as ‘carbon sinks’, this diminishes their value as complex ecosystems and for social welfare.
That’s according to a new report launched at the 19th Session of the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF19), which indicated a rising trend related to the ‘climatisation’ of forests, in which their role as climate sinks is of optimism value.
According to the report, International Forest Governance: A critical review of trends, drawbacks, and new approaches, which was produced by the Science-Policy Programme (SciPol) of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO), there is a major, untapped potential for policymakers to support long-term, local-focused alternatives to market-based forest governance.
‘Crowded and fragmented’
“The current ‘playing field’ for international forest governance is more crowded and fragmented than ever before, with a plethora of new actors and instruments,” commented Dr. Nelson Grima, deputy coordinator of IUFRO SciPol.
“The challenge now is to strengthen and coordinate forest policy to address power asymmetries between the different actors.”
The urgency of the climate crisis has led to a ‘commodification’ of forests due to their carbon sequestration potential as part of net zero initiatives, the report suggests, which prioritises short-term economic gains over longer-term sustainability.
Equity and social justice need to take centre stage in order to provide an accurate picture of progress when it comes to forest governance, rather than focusing on deforestation rates, it adds.
Measuring forest governance success using deforestation alone offers a restricted picture, excluding the interconnectedness between humanity and nature.
‘Alternative forest governance’
“Market-based approaches to forest governance such as forest carbon trading and zero deforestation supply chains are becoming an increasingly popular pathway for forest governance and finance, but unfortunately, as the report shows, they risk perpetuating inequalities and producing perverse effects on sustainable forest management,” said Prof. Constance McDermott of the University of Oxford, and lead author of the report.
“Non-market-based mechanisms such as state regulation and community-led initiatives offer important alternative pathways for just forest governance.”
The full report can be found here.
