Interview with IFSA President Amos Amanubo
Amos is a 25 year old Ugandan and a recent graduate from Makerere University, Kampala, holding a Bachelor’s Degree in Conservation Forestry and Production Technology. He has been the President of the International Forestry Students’ Association (IFSA) since August 2019. His favorite pastimes are cycling through natural landscapes and meeting friends.
The underlying cause of the COVID-19 pandemic is the spill-over of a virus from a presumed bat wildlife source – and its spread in the vast human population and its vulnerable systems. There are many questions yet unanswered about the virus’s source – which species of bat, was it sold in the Wuhan Wet Market, did a number of bat-human transmissions occur or were transmissions to other animal species involved in the development of a virus capable of human to human transmission. For the moment all efforts are on controlling the disease. It has emerged and spread rapidly around the highly connected planet. In the long run, understanding how to prevent further such pandemics will be a major focus.
“The future is for the young generation,” said Dr. Shirong Liu of the Chinese Academy of Forestry.
“And,” he added, “changes in the forest sector have led to new trends in forest education globally.
In a globally connected world, we are used to communicating online. Nevertheless, many of us have been caught flat-footed by the sudden need to step up our virtual collaborations and give up face-to-face meetings due to the coronavirus pandemic. Read how 25 scientists of IUFRO’s Global Forest Expert Panel (GFEP) on Forests and Poverty and the GFEP team at IUFRO Headquarters virtually jumped in at the deep end and learned how to swim.
“Forest landscapes (FLs) are often the basis of local economies and social identity,” said Professor Andreas Bolte, Head of Institute at the Thünen Institute of Forest Ecosystems in Eberswalde Germany.
“In past, many forests have been heavily degraded by unsustainable practices, and today they are still under heavy pressure worldwide through the loss and degradation of forests, conversion to other land uses and, increasingly, climate change,” he said.
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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.
Read more…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.
