Forests, resilience and climate change

About this project

Background 

Significant global climate change is inevitable. Forest ecosystems may not be able to adapt to the rate of temperature change or the intensity of weather events and other effects such as fires or floods. These impacts are likely to hit the world’s poor hardest with 1.2 billion people in Africa and Asia dependent on trees to generate food or cash. Forests may also serve as a source of resilience – absorbing harmful CO2 emissions, providing resources to local populations, and through forest-landscape design to protect communities from increasingly erratic weather.

Aims 

With an overall aim of better understanding and making the most of forest resilience in the face of climate change our goals are to:

  • support local institutions to make a realistic assessment of current and future links between climate change, forest resilience and forest-based livelihoods
  • to develop and implement action plans for institutional capacity building and effective adaptation.
     

Impacts 

  • Workshop held with participants from Africa and Asia during the UN Conference of Parties in Nairobi, November 2006 to consider the possible challenges to forest-based livelihoods
  • informal international network on forestry issues within climate change established following the 2006 workshop
  • wider international awareness and understanding achieved of the relationships between forest resilience and climate change through mapping of current international projects and literature
  • debate generated [where?] on the relationships between climate change, forest resilience, forest-based livelihoods and institutional capacity.

Partners 

Key partners in this work are colleagues involved in IIED’s Capacity strengthening in the Least Developed Countries for Adaptation to Climate Change (CLACC) programme.

Contact 

Duncan Macqueen duncan.macqueen@iied.org

Funded by 

Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs