Making forests fit for climate change

The Expert Panel on Adaptation of Forests to Climate Change today published its global assessment report on «Adaptation of Forests and People to Climate Change» and the policy brief «Making forests fit for climate change». The Expert Panel is led and coordinated by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO). Switzerland is represented in the report by Andreas Fischlin, Gian-Kasper Plattner, Carmenza Robledo.
The key findings of the report are:

• The carbon-regulating services of forests are at risk of being lost unless current carbon emissions are reduced substantially; this would result in the release of huge quantities of carbon to the atmosphere, exacerbating climate change.
• Climate change can increase the supply of timber in some regions although there will be considerable temporal variations.
• The impacts of climate change on forests will have far-reaching social and economic consequences for forest-dependent people. Adaptation measures must go beyond single technical solutions and address also the human-dimensions of the problem.
• Sustainable forest management is essential for reducing the vulnerability of forests to climate change. The current failure to implement it limits the capacity of forests and forest-dependent people to adapt to climate change.
• There is no universally applicable measure for adapting forests to climate change.
• Flexible policy is needed that are sensitive to context and do not rely on a single, one-size-fits-all mechanism.
• Even if adaptation measures are fully implemented, unmitigated climate change would, during this century, exceed the adaptive capacity of many forests.