IUFRO Spotlight #75 – IUFRO Task Forces: A multi-disciplinary approach to addressing forest challenges around the globe
IUFRO Vice-President Shirong Liu at 2019 IUFRO World Congress in Curitiba, Brazil. Photo courtesy of Congress Organizing Committee.
Current forest-related challenges are best addressed from a multi-disciplinary perspective.
Integrating knowledge from biophysical and socioeconomic sciences can provide more complete analyses of forest issues. These, in turn, are of more direct value to forest decision makers and practitioners.
That’s one of the primary reasons underlying the IUFRO Task Forces (TFs).
“The TFs serve as the platforms for scientists from different disciplines to work together and contribute their wisdom to the most pressing forest issues and international challenges,” said Dr. Shirong Liu, IUFRO Vice-President for Task Forces.
We are now in the
Sub-Saharan African country Ethiopia, “land of origins”, meaning origin
of humankind, Arabica coffee, blue Nile, and many more. In the seventh blog
post, the name of the restoration project is Ethiopia’s Landscape Restoration at Lower Meqii (Dugda area), Soddo district.
Inside the forest. Wind
blows. Leaves dance in synchronized movement. Joy with the result of protecting
and restoring degraded forests.
“I was directly involved in the land preparation, planting,
and maintenance of the trees together with crops,” said one of the female
farmer participants of the forest landscape restoration (FLR) project in Ghana.
With the Archaeological
Park and Ruins of Quirigua, a protected UNESCO World Heritage Site, and its
national tree, Ceiba sp., the fifth blog post is in
Guatemala. The name of the project is Chimaltenango
Restoration Initiative, in Guatemala, Central Highlands.
Land of Taj Mahal and
the second-most populous country in the world. India is the fourth country of
the blog series on the Forest Landscape Restoration Implementation: Progress on
the Ground.
Oui, oui mon ami, we
are in Madagascar, the third blog post in our FLR Snapshot series. The fourth
biggest island in the world and the house of lemurs. FLR is a hot topic in the
Boeny Region, which is dominated by vast flat areas below 400 m in altitude,
with volcanic rocks cutting across the long plains along the coast and a dense
network of rivers flowing through the landscape. Among the important networks
and governance structures in the region, is the FLR committee for the Boeny
region, established to connect the many FLR actors and develop a common base
for knowledge sharing and capacity development.
Northern Mongolia,
sub-taiga forest, Tujyin nars National park, is the second blog post of the FLR
Snapshot Series. The second largest landlocked country in the world, land of
Mongols, with breathtaking landscapes. Tujyin Nars
Reforestation Initiative was created to restore pine forest that had been deforested and
degraded due to improper forest harvesting and frequent fires. It has become one
of the best examples of successful forest landscape restoration of deforested
and degraded forests in northern Mongolia.
In the first blog post of the Forest Landscape Restoration
(FLR) Snapshot Series we will focus on the project Forest Landscape
Restoration Initiative of the Kiuñalla Community, in the Apurimac Region.
Located in the southern Andes of Peru, this region has been one of the first in
initiating actions within the framework of the country’s commitment to the Bonn
Challenge to restore 3.2 million hectares of degraded areas through plantations
for commercial purposes as well as for the recovery of ecosystem functions.
Using 21st century technology to examine the dynamics
of land use and land cover (LULC) in tropical forests over time, and how those
forests are affected by the changes, will be among the subjects discussed at
the IUFRO World Congress in Brazil shortly.
“The practices, rights and knowledge of
Indigenous Peoples in forestry are being increasingly recognized by national
policies, international treaties and by business arrangements such as
certification,” said Dr. Stephen Wyatt of the School of Forestry at the
University of Moncton in New Brunswick, Canada.
Haida Heritage Centre at sunrise. Photo: Ngaio Hotte.
“But,” he said, “actually putting these
into practice is challenging.”
