Protecting natural resources, fostering adaptation to and mitigation of climate change, and boosting resilience all depend on education. This sub-theme examines innovative teaching methods and resources for underserved and rural people. In order to scale up efforts to save forests, it also emphasizes increasing the capacity of entrepreneurs, sustainable enterprises, and governments. The scientific objectives outlined in the other sections of the plan are consistent with these themes, which cut across all of them.
In people across the world who depend on forests for their livelihoods and food security, access to forest genetic resources is crucial. Additionally, these materials serve as the cornerstone of tree-breeding initiatives for industrial forests. Despite their significance, tree species' genetic resources vary significantly within and across species as well as across geographical regions. This is caused by a number of genetic mechanisms, including natural selection, gene flow, recombination, and mutation.
Genetic resources are so vulnerable and might be lost or altered by alterations to the environment, such as climate change. Additionally, human activities like tree harvesting and changes in land use have an impact on how forest genetic resources are distributed.
To increase the resilience of forests to change and preserve forest biodiversity, it is imperative to protect the wide range of genetic variation found in forests. The FAO, which released the first global status assessment on forest genetic resources in 2014, acknowledges this. To assist in achieving this objective, the State of the World's Forest Genetic Resources (SOW-FGR) and the Global Plan of Action for the Conservation, Sustainable Use, and Development of FGR have been created.
To guarantee that future generations may enjoy the benefits of forests, it is essential to educate people about their significance. In order to achieve several of the Sustainable Development Goals, including SDG 13, it is also essential (to climate action). By minimizing items that harm forests, foresters and other forest workers keep them healthy. Wildfires, illnesses, and bug problems are a few of these things.
Additionally, they safeguard the water supplies that originate from trees. Streams, rivers, and the accumulated snowfall on the trees are some of these water sources. These safeguards stop large-scale water loss, which can result in runoff and mudslides in nearby regions.
The regeneration of trees following a harvest is another goal of foresters. In order to prevent grazing animals from damaging seedlings and stump sprouts, this can be accomplished by adding additional trees to a given region or by installing a deer exclusion fence.
In order to mitigate climate change, adapt to it, and preserve biodiversity, forests are essential. They absorb water, create oxygen, and store and sequester carbon. According to one of the most extensively read research from 2017, forests and other ecosystems can contribute up to one-third of the required CO2 reductions for the entire world by 2030. That might be sufficient to buy some time until greener fuels can take the place of fossil fuels.
Despite the significance of forests to climate, experts claim that it is difficult to forecast how they will react to future climatic changes. Long-term growth records are needed more for tropical forests, but monitoring and data access are difficult to come by in temperate locations (Clark 2007).
To aid in achieving this, scientists are developing tools and procedures that will enable policymakers to make choices that take into account both the threats to the long-term viability of forests and the advantages that forest ecosystems provide. These include remote sensing, mechanical vegetation modeling, and fusing long-term satellite records with data from forest plots.
The term "biodiversity" refers to a wide variety of living things, such as plants, animals, bacteria, and fungi. In many different environments across the world, including forests, seas, grasslands, and deserts, they may be found.
Since life first emerged on Earth, the idea of biological variety has undergone significant change. Over the last 3.8 billion years, there have been five major mass extinctions and a number of more minor catastrophes, which have led to significant declines in biodiversity. Multiple scales are used by ecologists to quantify biodiversity, including regional, species, and genetic diversity. Species richness and within-area diversity are two of the most used indicators of biodiversity (alpha diversity).
The region polled, the methodology used, and whether or not there was a high or low population density all affected how many people were counted. While species with wide geographic ranges need less conservation, those that are uncommon or confined to a limited region may need special consideration. A variety of ecosystem services, including the cycling of water and nutrients, pollination, and habitat management, must also be protected in order to protect biodiversity.