The world faces huge challenges in overcoming the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, food insecurity, the war in Ukraine, the accelerating climate crisis and biodiversity loss.
In response to these multiple global threats, we need solutions at scale that are cost-effective and equitable and can be implemented rapidly. Forests and trees offer such solutions and can help us recover if we better recognise their value and their crucial role in building resilient and sustainable economies.
The latest report on the State of the World’s Forests from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), to be presented at the XV World Forestry Congress under the theme “Building a Green, Healthy and Resilient Future with Forests”, clearly shows three ways in which we can step up action if we want to unlock their potential: Halting deforestation and maintaining forests could avoid significant greenhouse-gas emissions – about 14 per cent of the reduction needed up to 2030 to keep planetary warming below 1.5 C. It could also safeguard more than half the Earth’s terrestrial biodiversity, which is a key provider of ecosystem services for sustainable agriculture. Forests are the largest terrestrial pool of carbon and of biodiversity, yet they are shrinking.
Restoring degraded lands and expanding agroforestry: 1.5 billion hectares of degraded land ~ an area twice the size of Australia ~ would benefit from restoration and increasing tree cover could boost agricultural productivity on another 1 billion hectares.
Restoring degraded land through afforestation and reforestation could cost-effectively remove CO2 from the atmosphere equivalent to eliminating 195-325 million gasoline-powered passenger cars from the road each year for 30 years.
Sustainably using existing forests and building green value chains would help meet future demand for more renewable materials.
Considering that the global consumption of all-natural resources is set to more than double from 92 billion tonnes in 2017 to 190 billion tonnes in 2060, using sustainable wood in construction, for example, can store carbon and address the climate crisis while increasing resilience and sustainability.
There will be no healthy economy on an unhealthy planet. Environmental deterioration is contributing to climate change, biodiversity loss and the emergence of new diseases. Despite the crucial role forests and trees can play in addressing these crises, they are consistently undervalued in our economic systems. As a result, forests are given neither the attention nor the investment needed for their meaningful conservation and sustainable management.
We must substantially increase investment in these three interlinked forest-based pathways. There are a number of ways to do this: It is essential to look at how to repurpose existing incentives for agri- cultural producers ~ worth about USD 540 billion per year ~ to help make the structures governing how our food is produced, distributed and consumed more sustainable.