In response to the global climate change challenges, a group of international organisations have launched a strategic framework named as the Collaborative Partnership on Forests to ensure sustainable management of forests that play a major role in a changed climate.
Taking account of the rapidly changing future climatic conditions, the frame work emphasizes on the importance to assist policy-makers and forest sectors in adopting appropriate measures to address climate change.
The management actions include the conservation of genetic variation, reduced impact logging and policies that ensure effective management responses to ecological change. The new framework also supports the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
According to the global forest resources assessment of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the total carbon in forests (constitute nearly one-third of the earth’s land surface and account almost half its terrestrial carbon pool) was estimated at 633 giga tonnes in 2005 - equivalent to 160 tonnes of carbon per hectare.
Jan Heino, Chairperson of the Collaborative Partnership on Forests and FAO Assistant Director-General for Forestry, said: “Sustainable forest management has a significant strategic role in achieving long-term climate change mitigation and it provides a robust framework for effective adaptation. This goes far beyond traditional management and includes conservation of biodiversity, support to livelihoods, provision of a range of forest goods and services, and issues related to governance and financing,"
Deforestation, forest degradation and other disturbances in forests contribute largely (17.4 percent) to global greenhouse gas emissions. Expansion of agriculture, urban and infrastructure development primarily cause most of deforestation in developing countries owing to increasing population and need of higher economic growth.
As the growth and conservation of forest can have long term effect in future climatic change, their effective management should be in priority of every public policy.
FAO adds: ‘Forests make a substantial contribution to the mitigation of climate change through carbon sequestration, carbon substitution, and carbon conservation. The extent to which they do so is a function of their management and the effectiveness of policies at the local, national and global levels.
The Collaborative Partnership on Forests strategic framework lays the groundwork for a coordinated forest-sector response to the global climate change agenda. Its force is in the fact that it has been jointly created and agreed by the world's major forest organisations. It is offered as guidelines to all forest-related policy-makers and practitioners around the world.’
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