Instant Insights: Sustainable Tropical Forest Management

Patrick Hardcastle is a Forestry Development Specialist who has worked in over 40 countries in the last 55 years. He started his career with 12 years in the Malawi Forestry Department, the last eight heading the Forestry Research Institute while specialising in silviculture and site classification. He followed this with 10 years of mainly post-graduate teaching at the Universities of Oxford and Aberdeen. Thereafter, he has been a consultant working with major bilateral and multilateral donors with a focus on forestry but increasingly also engaged with biodiversity conservation, climate change, economic and social equity within the broad framework of sustainable forest management. Alice Muchugi has over 20 years of experience in research on sustainable utilisation and conservation of tropical tree genetic resources. Since 2014, she is the Manager of Genetic Resource Unit at World Agroforestry (ICRAF) in Nairobi where she coordinates the activities of the ICRAF seedbank in Nairobi and regional field genebanks to ensure that superior tree germplasm is available for ICRAF collaborative projects and other interested users. Formerly, Alice was a senior lecturer at the Kenyatta University where in addition to teaching Genetics, she mentored and supervised several graduate students. She has a PhD in Population Genetics from Kenyatta University, Kenya. She has published over 90 publications. Dr Jürgen Blaser is Professor of International Forestry and Climate Change at Bern University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland. Professor Blaser is a former Chair of the International Tropical Timber Organisation (ITTO) and former Senior Forestry Advisor at the World Bank.

Chapter 1 - An overview of tropical forest formations: Alice Muchugi, World Agroforestry (ICRAF), Kenya; Sammy Muraguri, Kunming Institute of Botany, China; Hesti L. Tata, Forest Research & Development Centre, Indonesia; Jürgen Blaser, Bern University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland; and Patrick D. Hardcastle, Forestry Development Specialist, UK;

1 Introduction
2 The tropics: defining the enabling conditions for tropical forests
3 Classifying tropical forest formations
4 Structure and diversity of tropical forest ecosystems
5 Conclusion
6 References


Chapter 2 - Defining sustainable forest management (SFM) in the tropics: Francis E. Putz, University of Florida-Gainesville, USA; and Ian D. Thompson, Thompson Forest Ltd.-Kelowna, Canada;

1 Introduction
2 Evolving concepts of sustainability
3 Appropriate scales for assessment of SFM
4 SFM trade-offs at different scales
5 Defining terms in SFM
6 Land-use types in SFM
7 Challenges for SFM in the tropics
8 Ways forward
9 References


Chapter 3 - Ecosystem services delivered by tropical forests: regulating services of tropical forests for climate and hydrological cycles: Oliver Gardi, Bern University of Applied Sciences and School of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences HAFL, Switzerland;

1 Introduction
2 Forest-climate interactions
3 Forests in the carbon cycle
4 Climate change mitigation in the forestry and timber sector
5 Forests in the water cycle (regional scale)
6 Summary and future trends
7 Where to look for further information
8 References


Chapter 4 - Forest landscape restoration (FLR) of tropical forests: Stephanie Mansourian, Mansourian.org/University of Geneva, Switzerland/IUFRO, Austria;

1 Introduction
2 Implementing forest landscape restoration (FLR)
3 Case studies
4 Challenges and opportunities in taking FLR forward
5 Conclusion
6 Where to look for further information
7 References


Chapter 5 - Achieving sustainable management of tropical forests: overview and conclusions: Jürgen Blaser, Bern University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland; Patrick D. Hardcastle, Forestry Development Specialist, UK; and Gillian Petrokofsky, University of Oxford, UK;

1 Introduction: sustainable forest management (SFM)
2 Importance of tropical forest ecology
3 Forests, climate and climate change
4 Forest loss and degradation
5 Forest products and ecological services
6 Community-based forest management (CBFM) and SFM
7 SFM and the United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs)
8 Wood products, plantations and SFM
9 Monitoring and measuring for SFM
10 Shifting cultivation and SFM
11 Forest landscape restoration (FLR)
12 SFM in major tropical regions
13 Conclusions
14 References