Trees, forests and water: Cool insights for a hot world

Forest-driven water and energy cycles are poorly integrated into regional, national, continental and global decision-making on climate change adaptation, mitigation, land use and water management. This constrains humanity’s ability to protect our planet’s climate and life-sustaining functions. The substantial body of research we review reveals that forest, water and energy interactions provide the foundations for carbon storage, for cooling terrestrial surfaces and for distributing water resources. Forests and trees must be recognized as prime regulators within the water, energy and carbon cycles. If these functions are ignored, planners will be unable to assess, adapt to or mitigate the impacts of changing land cover and climate. Our call to action targets a reversal of paradigms, from a carbon-centric model to one that treats the hydrologic and climate-cooling effects of trees and forests as the first order of priority. For reasons of sustainability, carbon storage must remain a secondary, though valuable, by-product. The effects of tree cover on climate at local, regional and continental scales offer benefits that demand wider recognition. The forest- and tree-centered research insights we review and analyze provide a knowledge-base for improving plans, policies and actions. Our understanding of how trees and forests influence water, energy and carbon cycles has important implications, both for the structure of planning, management and governance institutions, as well as for how trees and forests might be used to improve sustainability, adaptation and mitigation efforts

FAO's Work in Sustainable Mountain Development and Watershed Management—A 2017 Update

The adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has propelled the effective implementation of sustainable mountain development. The 2030 Agenda recognizes that livelihoods and natural resources cannot be addressed separately. Investing in the sustainable development of mountain communities and ecosystem conservation will provide benefits for humanity as a whole. Since its appointment as task manager for Chapter 13 of Agenda 21 in 1992, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has worked for sustainable mountain development and has thus contributed to increasing global awareness of the importance of mountain ecosystems and the plight of mountain peoples