Perceived Injustices in Forest Policy Interventions are Causes of Forest Resources Degradation and Loss in Ghana: A Review

Forests provide diverse co-benefits, including livelihoods enhancement, poverty alleviation, and biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services such as climate mitigation. Consequently, Ghana has embraced several global, regional, national, and local forest policy interventions to safeguard its forest resources’ sustainable management. However, the forest policy interventions have not adequately addressed the co-benefits issues of forest resources leading to several forest illegalities that drive forest resources degradation and loss. These forest policies and interventions on the ground primarily favour carbon stocks enhancement and sequestration activities for carbon mitigation purposes compared to the benefits, access and rights that forest-dependent people and communities are supposed to derive from forest resources. These perceived injustices in the access and distribution of forest resources have culminated into all forms of forest illegalities driving Ghana’s forest resources into massive degradation and loss. Currently, Ghana is experiencing a 2% rate of annual deforestation and forest degradation, which translates into approximately 135,000 ha/year of forest cover loss due to anthropogenic causes. Our review is based on relevant and critical forest documents, and scientific peer-reviewed papers on Ghana’s forest policy interventions and dynamics recently published. The information gathered enabled us to highlight the perceived injustices in the forest policy interventions and their effects on forest resources. Unjust forest resources sharing and distribution are critical drivers of forest resources degradation and loss. We thus offer lessons for remedying the unfair distribution and injustices to promote equitable forest resources rights and benefit access to local forest-dependent people. It is expected that this review will offer and assist forest policy, intervention spatial and other planners and designers to find a possible way forward to avoid nature degradation, including biodiversity loss, to resolve perceived injustices in the forestry sector, to use adequate all ecosystem services provided by forests as well as to promote local livelihood and sustainability.

Review on Forest Policy Development in China

Forest policy evolution was presented firstly in order to understand the background of forest policy development in China. The recent changes of forest policy were introduced in details, including forest policies on improving biodiversity conservation and securing national ecological safety, restoring key ecosystems, promoting sustainable forest management (SFM), clarifying forest land tenure and protecting farmer’s right on forest and forest land management, promoting healthy forestry industry development and strengthening international cooperation. In addition, it was presented that the evolution of policies in other related sectors and their impacts on forests and forestry, such as bio-energy plantation establishment plan, timber saving and substituting policy, environmental impact assessment (EIA) policy and climate change policy. The features of forest policies in China were analyzed and recommendations were given to ensure the effectiveness of forest policies in the end.

Forests of Greece, Their Multiple Functions and Uses, Sustainable Management and Biodiversity Conservation in the Face of Climate Change

This is a review paper based on national and international literature, national inventories and empirical approach. A general overview of the forests, forest management and forest biodiversity of Greece are briefly summarized. The distribution of the main forest species and their ecosystems in the Geographic regions of Greece is presented in a tabular form. Their multiple functions and uses, their management type/regime, their risks and threats, protection and conservation measures are also synoptically described. Furthermore, adaptive forest management and silviculture as well as management of genetic diversity in order to face climate change are also analysed. Research priority areas on biodiversity and challenges for biodiversity research and related policy in Greece have been summarized. The new Rural Development Program (2014-2020), which is currently in the final phase of implementation, will take into consideration the forest itself and forest-related European and National legal obligations. Finally, major conclusions and research priority areas on future management and conservation of forests are highlighted.

The Genesis and Paradigm Shift in Forest Inventory: Bangladesh Chapter

Bangladesh (Indo-Bangladesh to independent Bangladesh) has more than 250 years of history in forest inventory. The Boundary demarcation of the Sundarbans forest in 1764 was the first record of forest inventory. A total of 30 inventories have been recorded that were started to form the boundary demarcation to complex biodiversity, biomass, and carbon stock assessment. These inventories used simple cartographic to complex satellite image processing techniques, software base data/information collection methods, and sophisticated statistical procedures in data analysis. Eventually, the history of the forest inventory of Bangladesh is about 100 years older than the history of forest management. This study aimed to classify the inventories into distinct time frames based on outputs and align them with the motive of rulers, existing forest policy, and contemporary global and national issues. The historical records forest inventory has been divided into four distinct periods, e.g., Mid eighteenth to the late nineteenth century: 1764-1876;Early twenty century: 1905-1924;Mid-twenty to late twenty century: 1958-2000;and Early twenty-first century: 2001-present). The objectives/outputs of each inventory were highly linked with the motive of rulers, policy statements, available technologies, and recent issues from national and global perspectives.

Mapping aboveground biomass by integrating geospatial and forest inventory data through a k-nearest neighbor strategy in North Central Mexico

As climate change negotiations progress,monitoring biomass and carbon stocks is becoming an important part of the current forest research.Therefore,national governments are interested in developing forest-monitoring strategies using geospatial technology.Among statistical methods for mapping biomass,there is a nonparametric approach called k-nearest neighbor(kNN).We compared four variations of distance metrics of the kNN for the spatially-explicit estimation of aboveground biomass in a portion of the Mexican north border of the intertropical zone.Satellite derived,climatic,and topographic predictor variables were combined with the Mexican National Forest Inventory(NFI)data to accomplish the purpose.Performance of distance metrics applied into the kNN algorithm was evaluated using a cross validation leave-one-out technique.The results indicate that the Most Similar Neighbor(MSN)approach maximizes the correlation between predictor and response variables(r=0.9).Our results are in agreement with those reported in the literature.These findings confirm the predictive potential of the MSN approach for mapping forest variables at pixel level under the policy of Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Forest Degradation(REDD+).

Forest Policies Addressing Climate Change in China

As a developing country with a large population and a fragile ecological environment, China is particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change. Beginning with the Rio Conference of 1992 China has played a progressively enhanced role in combating climate change. A series of policies and measures to address climate change have been taken in the overall context of national sustainable development strategy, making positive contributions to the mitigation and adaptation to climate change, among which forestry linked policies have been given increasing priority to over the years. At the UN Summit on Climate Change in September 2009, China's President committed the country to an unprecedented increase in forest carbon sink through augmenting forest coverage by 40 million ha and forest stock volume by 1.3 billion m3 by 2020 compared to the 2005 level. For realizing it China has evolved the Forestry Action Plan to Cope with Climate Change that sets forth five basic principles that include combining the targets of forestry development with the national strategies on climate change, increasing forest size and improving forest quality, increasing carbon trading and controlling emissions, combining government guidance with social participation, slowing down climate change, and adapting to the change. Further, in order to make it people's program rather than a top-down government initiative, China is speeding up the trend of decentralization and privatization of forest management through collective forest tenure reform that are geared towards releasing direct governmental control over forest management, decentralizing the powers of forest administrations to lower levels and promoting community participation in forest management. These comprehensive steps have changed the face of forestry in the country but both the government and the scientific community realize that this is merely a beginning in the long and arduous task of combating climate change.

Variable retention harvesting: conceptual analysis according to different environmental ethics and forest valuation

Background:Conceptual clarity is important to attain precise communication of scientific knowledge and to implement appropriate technological and policy actions.Many concepts referring to forest management are widely used by decision-makers,regardless of their complexity.Although the scientific and methodological issues of forestry practices are frequently discussed in the literature,their normative dimensions are rarely treated.Thus,linguistic uncertainty increases when different environmentally ethical perspectives and ways of valuing forests are considered.The objective was to compare different conceptualizations on the silvicultural systems suggested for forest management and the implications they have for conservation.We have conceptually contrasted highintensity forestry practices with variable retention harvesting,considering different environmentally ethical perspectives and forest valuation alternatives.Results:Clear boundaries between clear-cutting,selective logging,and variable retention harvesting can be evidenced when different ethical points of view and alternatives in the human-nature relationships are considered.We have found a variety of definitions of variable retention harvesting that can be analyzed under different ethical positions.Sharply contrasting views on variable retention harvesting can be evidenced if nature is considered to be purely at human’s service or if it is conceptualized as humans co-inhabiting with nature.The latter position implies that the maintenance of ecological,evolutionary,and historical processes supported by unmanaged forest stands is a crucial step for forest management proposals based on variable retention harvesting.Conclusions:Forestry practices that are focused on forest yields and that misinterpret functional uncertainty of forest functioning would be risky.Moreover,forestry with variable retention harvesting could imply good yields with reasonable conservation management in some contexts,while it could be unacceptable in other socioecological contexts.The improvement of conceptual clarity on the different meanings of variable retention harvesting and the development of indicators for forest management based on the variations of this concept can reduce controversies.