Plantations for Sustainable Productive Landscapes Event
World Forestry Congress XIV – Durban, South Africa
Tuesday 8 September 2015 from 12:45 to 14:15
Background
Planted forests continue to grow in both importance and extent. They currently provide a third of the world’s industrial wood, a proportion likely to increase significantly in coming decades. They also have great potential to deliver environmental services, and social benefits. However, the establishment and management of plantation forests can be controversial, with concerns that environmental and social costs outweigh benefits. Examples of these concerns include the social impacts of large-scale plantation investments and the potential use of genetic modification technologies.
The Forests Dialogue (TFD) and the New Generations Plantations (NGP) platform are two international multi-stakeholder processes working to enhance the sustainability of plantations in the landscape. The International Union on Forest Research Organizations is a global research organization with a renewed focus on plantations in a landscape context. This event will highlight common themes emerging from the TFD and NGP processes and IUFRO research, and provide a forum for discussion of these issues.
The NGP platform has recently published a Think Piece discussing the role plantations play in landscapes, based on the experience from Brazil and South Africa, and informing the upcoming encounter, in Chile. TFD is conducting a global stakeholder survey of perceptions about plantation, and a global review of plantations, to inform its second dialogue series about plantation forests. IUFRO has created a new Task Force to strengthen research on sustainable management of planted forests, in the follow up of 2014 World Congress. This event will provide the state of the art of knowledge from these three initiatives, influencing the future direction of work on plantations for sustainable, productive landscapes.
Event Description
This event will provide a multi-stakeholder panel of experts who are working in or researching the intensively managed planted forests sector. The panel will represent organizations such as WWF, TFD, IUFRO and WBCSD. Peter Kanowski (ANU) will give an introduction of the current state of plantations. Each of the panelists will then have five minutes to present what their organization is doing in order to make plantations sustainable in the landscapes. After these presentations, there will be a “chat show style” question and answer (Q&A) session with the audience, moderated by Peter Kanowski (ANU). This will last for the majority of the time. Milagre Nuvunga (MICAIA) and Isilda Nhantumbo (IIED) will give closing remarks and thoughts to consider for the future of planted forests.
Objectives
- To explore the current progress on intensively managed planted forests
- To determine different viewpoints from multiple stakeholders on planted forests
- To engage in dialogue regarding the role that planted forests play in creating a sustainable future
Location
Room 12D
Format
12:45 – 12:50 – Welcome and Remarks – Peter Kanowski, ANU
12:50 – 13:20 – Presentations from Panel. Participants: Gary Dunning (TFD), Antti Marjokorpi (WBCSD), Luis Neves Silva (WWF NGP), Tim Payn (IUFRO)
13:20 – 14:10 PM - Discussion and Q&A with Audience. Moderator: Peter Kanowski, ANU
14:10 PM – 14:15 PM - Closing remarks – Milagre Nuvunga (MICAIA)
Moderator/Presenter
Peter Kanowski – Master of University House and Professor of Forestry, Australia National University (ANU)
Panelists
Gary Dunning – Executive Director, The Forests Dialogue (TFD)
Antti Marjokorpi – SVP, Forest Operations, Stora Enso (WBCSD Forest Solutions Group)
Tim Payn – IUFRO Task Force: Sustainable Planted Forests for a Greener Future
Luis Neves Silva – Manager, New Generation Plantations (WWF)
Respondent
Isilda Nhantumbo – Senior Researcher, Natural Resources Group, IIED
Milagre Nuvunga – Executive Director, MICAIA Foundation (TBC)
Convening Organizations
The Forests Dialogue - The Forests Dialogue (TFD) was created in 1998 to provide international leaders in the forest sector with an ongoing, multi-stakeholder dialogue (MSD) platform and process focused on developing mutual trust, a shared understanding, and collaborative solutions to challenges in achieving sustainable forest management and forest conservation around the world.
WWF – WWF’s mission is to stop the degradation of the planet’s natural environment and to build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature, by conserving the world’s biological diversity, ensuring that the use of renewable natural resources is sustainable, and promoting the reduction of pollution and wasteful consumption.
WWF combines cutting edge science, new perspectives from partners and our decades of on-the-ground experience to help tackle some of the biggest challenges and stickiest issues in conservation. On forests, WWF takes a solutions-oriented, integrated and local to global approach that seeks synergies with relevant stakeholders to influence drivers of deforestation and degradation. WWF works in close cooperation and coordination with other stakeholders to trigger new thinking and innovative solutions to tackle the vast resource challenges facing a world of over seven billion people. WWF advocates Zero Net Deforestation and Forest Degradation (ZNDD) by 2020 as a global target that reflects the scale and urgency with which threats to the world’s forests and climate need to be tackled.
WBCSD – WBCSD’s Forest Solutions Group brings together about 35% of global forest, paper and packaging sales. It is a global platform for strategic collaboration among value chain partners to bring more of the world’s forests under sustainable management and expand markets for responsible forest products. The FSG is actively engaged with The Forests Dialogue, in particular the IMPF initiative, to engage in dialogue regarding the role that planted forests play in creating a sustainable future and to ensure increasing demand for forest products is met in a responsible way. You can learn more about FSG here.