Restoration
Plantations and tree crop commodities
Enhanced nutrition and food security
Biodiversity, safeguarding and conservation
Nationally determined contributions
Bioenergy and biomaterials
Blue carbon and peatlands
Climate change adaptation
Landscape governance
Gender
Silvopastoral systems
Market-based agroforestry-forestry
Farm-forest policy interface
Agroecology
Livelihood trajectory modelling and assessment
Inclusive finance and business models
Innovating finance for sustainable landscapes
Public and private commitments to zero deforestation
Orphan tree crops
Effectiveness of approaches to sustainable supply
Quality of FTA research for development
Sentinel landscapes
Foresight
Seeds and seedlings delivery systems
Smallholder tree-crop commodities
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Posted by
FTA communications |
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Posted by
FTA communications |
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Posted by
FTA communications |
The bioeconomy is made up of those parts of the economy that use renewable terrestrial and aquatic biological resources, such as forests, fish, and wildlife, to produce food, building materials, energy, medicine, and other essential items. While nonwood forest products (NWFPs) are essential items in the bioeconomy, there are many gaps in our knowledge: what is the role of NWFPs in promoting larger-scale economic growth including through value addition? Can NWFPs support a transition to green growth? Are NWFP institutions and knowledge integrated into such transitions? To what degree do NWFPs promote sustainable resource use, generate employment, and contribute to poverty alleviation? Should bioeconomic interventions and policies focus on or avoid NWFPs? This collaborative session invites presentations that explore these questions, preferably through empirically-based data.
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FTA communications |
Scientific research on the development of new processing and utilization technology for bamboo and rattan is being conducted increasingly all over the world to ensure the sustainable development of bamboo and rattan resources. The topics of this session will cover bamboo structural timber, bamboo fiber reinforced polymer composites, bamboo structure and properties, bamboo biomass energy, bamboo carbon and vinegar, bamboo preservation and rattan utilization.
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FTA communications |
Third-party forest management (FM) certification emerged as a tool for assessing and communicating the environmental and social performance of forest operations. 25 years later FM certification is mainstream, supported worldwide by major producers and buyers. Among driving forces for certification are corporate purchasing, green building schemes and “green consumer” demand, backed by social and environmental NGOs. On the one hand evidence for impacts of FM certification is increasingly needed given the growing demand for labelled products. Researchers from various disciplines look into the different aspects of certification, such as impacts on FM and timber markets; effects for forest workers and communities; quality of certification audits; governance and authority of certification schemes; and estimation of consumers’ willingness-to-pay price premiums for certified products. On the other hand, emerging markets for ecosystem services (ES) (carbon credits, water quality and quantity, wetland mitigation, species conservation etc.) presents new opportunities for forest landowners and managers, with increasing recognition of the importance of ES markets and their values. This session will discuss the impacts of sustainable FM, forest products and services through economic, environmental and social perspectives and will also consider challenges, needs and gaps analysis with regards to impact assessments and certification in general. The session will then assess some of these emerging ES markets including processes to increase forestland value.
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FTA communications |
Integrated landscape approaches (ILAs) aim to holistically address threats related to forest degradation, loss of environmental services, food security, and climate change, embarking on negotiated outcomes of multi-stakeholder processes around common concern entry points. However, the politics of negotiated landscape governance still remain underexposed. This session aims to explore the interface between political ecology and ILAs both conceptually and empirically, addressing the question: how can political ecological insights into the politics and framing of human-nature interactions, diverging interests, power imbalances and inequalities in resource access and decision-making at landscape level be made functional to the operationalization of ILAs?
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FTA communications |
Highly productive management systems required for biomass production may have a strong impact on ecosystems. Consequently, sustainable, locally adapted best-practice management schemes are needed, and the development of forest biomass harvesting guidelines is a promising tool to ensure sustainable production. This session is open to contributions assessing aspects of woody biomass production at different scales (e.g. local-global, national forest inventories), dealing with potential consequences of land-use change on soils (e.g. nutrient depletion, acidification, carbon cycle), water (e.g. pollution, altering catchment water balances) and atmosphere (e.g. climate change mitigation potentials). Interdisciplinary and holistic approaches, as well as abstracts proposing alternative use of forest biomass (gasification, biomass-to-liquid, torrefacation, and pyrolysis) are welcome. We also encourage submission of contributions about policy development in context of sustainable biomass production (e.g. harvesting guidelines).
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FTA communications |
Fast-growing plantation forests are broadly defined as having average growth rates ranging from 10 to in excess of 40 m3/ha/yr, with shorter rotations from less than 6 years to around 35 or 40 years. Establishment of fast growing forests is one of the most effective ways to meet the growing demand for wood. Small in area, they are disproportionately significant for global timber supply. They can decrease the pressure to log natural forests and can help protect natural resources such as water, soil and biodiversity. They have the potential to improve the economic welfare of the communities in which they are sited. At the same time, intensively managed, industrial forest plantations of a single species on a short rotation arouse controversy as to their benefits for the community, the land and the environment. Social and environmental needs are increasingly influencing planning and management methods applied to plantations whose original prime objective was the profitable production of industrial wood. This session addresses the overall question of how to best sustainably manage fast growing, industrial plantation forests in a variety of geographic locations and settings, to enhance ecosystem resilience, and ensure that multiple objectives can be met concurrently.
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FTA communications |
In most countries farms and forests are governed by overlapping policy frameworks. The continuum from farm to forest is often overlooked as a result of the different aims, philosophies and disciplines that inform agricultural and forest policies. This session seeks to understand how and why multiple policy frameworks are often applied over a landscape, producing contradictions, confusion or gaps that affect local management decisions and behaviour, often in unintended ways. This session showcases evidence-based papers providing critical insights from Latin America, Asia and Africa into how this farm-forest interface is governed such that multi-use practices are accommodated, resulting in positive sustainable, people-centered outcomes. These papers introduce a range of methods to study the farm-forest interface, forest policy and governance that aim to strengthen qualitative and quantitative rigor of evidence. At the end of the session, we have time for a moderated discussion. Authors are invited to submit their paper to a special edition on the topic in the International Forestry Review.
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FTA communications |
World Bank side event
The event, co-organized by the World Bank, the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and World Agroforestry (ICRAF), will bring together researchers and practitioners to present and discuss the following topics:
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Posted by
FTA communications |
The goal of this session is to generate a science-policy dialogue and provide credible scientific information for sound decision making related to the role of tropical wetlands in climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies. This session will encompass biophysical, socio-economic and governance facets of wetlands for effective conservation and restoration.
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FTA communications |
Recent trends in the agriculture sector necessitate farm diversification as an essential strategy for economic competitiveness in a global market. Agroforestry systems offer great promise for the production of biomass for biofuel, specialty and organic crops, pasture-based dairy and beef, among others. Agroforestry also offers strategies for carbon sequestration, soil enrichment, biodiversity conservation, and air and water quality improvement for not only the landowners or farmers, but for society at large. Recent research findings of these ecosystem services provided by agroforestry will be shared in this technical session and follow up subplenary and poster sessions.
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FTA communications |
Considerable efforts have been made by developing countries to develop approaches that achieve emission reductions and access results-based finance at local, jurisdictional and national scale. This session will showcase pilot studies and research exploring approaches for achieving REDD+, and using results-based finance to incentivise these actions. Papers are invited that explore REDD+ actions, results-based finance or benefit sharing at project, jurisdictional or national level, from actions by local/traditional communities to regional or national policy and regulations, governance, including their impacts; with the aim of generating discussion of the challenges and potential solutions for linkage across these scales.
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Posted by
FTA communications |
In recent times, states and business have made major commitments related to forests to move away from unsustainable business-as-usual pathways. Yet, so far rhetoric still dominates: large scale international investments in tropical deforestation continue, EU bioeconomy strategies seem to be at odds with climate goals and measurable outcomes in terms of avoided emissions are lacking, signaling problems with current governance responses and ineffectiveness of voluntary commitments. Arguably, success in achieving such commitments will depend on robust accountability structures. It is assumed that a number of enabling conditions can enhance transparency and lead to desired transformational change away from unsustainable business-as-usual practices and their underlying power relations, including: i) new information (e.g. analyses of historical environmental footprints, emission displacement and leakage), made possible by ii) new technologies (e.g. remote sensing), and iii) new coalitions between different members of civil society. This session aims to examine the role of politics and power relations and its effects on accountability structures in forest governance. We call for papers that investigate enabling (and hindering) conditions for accountability in meeting climate and development commitments, and provide lessons for improved forest and land use governance.
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FTA communications |
FTA side event
Given the incredible amount of new findings presented by thousands of scientists from so many organizations from all over the world gathered in Curitiba (Brazil), What’s next for forestry?
The XXV IUFRO Congress brings together the latest from forest science. It is also inserted in a very dense international agenda: climate week NYC, COP25, heading to 2020 which will be a key year for the Rio Conventions, the start of a key decade for mankind and the planet.
FTA, the world’s largest R4D program in the area of forests, trees and agroforestry, would like to take this opportunity to exchange, with all interested scientists attending the conference, views and perspectives on what needs to be prioritized for future forest research.
The session is open to all interested parties.
