World Forests, Society and Environment
World Forests, Society and Environment
Interview with Dr. Pia Katila, Coordinator of IUFRO’s Special Project on World Forests, Society and Environment (IUFRO-WFSE)
Dr. Katila is an expert in international forest policy, governance, and sustainable development with a special focus on developing countries. She works at Luke, the Natural Resources Institute Finland, based in Helsinki, where the WFSE Project has always been hosted. Visit: https://www.iufro.org/science/wfse/
Read more…Studying Forestry to be Part of a Solution to a Problem
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.
View from the forest: the interlinked crises of COVID-19, environmental degradation and inequity – A Guest Blog
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.
Link to license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode
IUFRO Spotlight #77 – Stepping up the Global Discussion on Forest Education
IUFRO Spotlight #77 – Stepping up the Global Discussion on Forest Education
“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.
IUFRO 125th Anniversary Congress Spotlight #53 – Humans and Wildlife: Sharing Space in a Crowded World
There’s a line in a song by U.S. singer-songwriter Dee Moeller that goes: “The wide open spaces are closing in quickly, from the weight of the whole human race…”
Elephant dung found on a village farm, with crop damage, nearby Pendjari Biosphere Reserve (Northern Benin). Credit Dr Chabi DJAGOUN
That line could well be the sub-title for a session to be held at the upcoming IUFRO 125th Congress in Freiburg, Germany entitled: Co-existence of humans and wildlife in changing landscapes and climate.
Current human population growth is causing an increasing demand for natural resources and a growing pressure for access to land which, among other things, affects wildlife habitat and the interactions between wildlife and humans, said Dr. Chabi Djagoun, of the Laboratory of Applied Ecology in Cotonou, Benin. Read more…
IUFRO Spotlight #45 – If you’re ‘remotely’ interested in monitoring biodiversity…
Eds: GOFC-GOLD & GEO BON. Report version UNCBD COP-13, GOFC-GOLD Land Cover Project Office, Wageningen University, The Netherlands.
ISSN: 2542-6729
There is a growing need for better information on how remote sensing data can support biodiversity monitoring in tropical forests. In response to this need a new sourcebook has been published with the aim of informing national and sub-national policy and decisions.
More than 70 authors, several of them from the IUFRO community, contributed to the sourcebook that is targeted at project managers, academic institutions, NGOs, students and researchers, among others, with a background in remote sensing. Read more…
Spotlight #27 – Genes the means to screen future forest scene
Genes the means to screen future forest scene
Women caring for tree seedlings in a nursery in Niger. Credit: Bioversity International/L. Snook
Forest ecosystem restoration is a critical component in tackling climate change, combatting biodiversity loss and desertification, and for providing products and services that support livelihoods at a local level.
For those reasons, restoring and rehabilitating forests and degraded lands will be one of the major environmental challenges of this century.
But, as a recent thematic study coordinated by Bioversity International, a IUFRO Member Organization, for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations – Genetic Considerations in Ecosystem Restoration Using Native Tree Species – notes, there is more to forest restoration than simply planting trees.