Fostering synergies between forest and ocean management for climate action
The latest of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) Policy Dialogue series, on sustainable forest and ocean resource management, allowed for a lively exchange between leading UN, private sector, academic and civil society voices
26 May 2021, New York. The third of a four‑part series of the UN DESA Global Policy Dialogues for Climate Action took place in a virtual setting from New York. It brought experts from UN agencies, including FAO, and other leading voices from different sectors under the shared aim of exchanging applicable knowledge for sustainable forest and ocean resource management and their synergies as a driver for climate change mitigation. It was a timely opportunity to discuss these synergies in the context of post‑pandemic recovery.
The dialogue session was organized by the UN Forum on Forests, the UN Environment Programme and the UN Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (UN-REDD).
Mette Wilkie, Director of FAO’s Forestry Division, kicked off the first panel discussion on forest restoration and sustainable management as an economic and environmental recovery pathway. The multi-faceted importance of forests was made clear by Wilkie, who noted that forests provide a variety of products we depend on in our daily lives and host the vast majority of terrestrial biodiversity. Forests and their protection are, in turn, part and parcel of climate action, she stressed.
“Since 1990, we have lost an area of forest the size of India and Nigeria combined,” Wilkie remarked, pointing to how this extent of deforestation and associated forest fires contributes to climate change, hence the need to protect, manage and restore the world’s forests. “We need to address the underlying causes of forest degradation and deforestation,” she added.
UN DESA Global Policy Dialogue series, a solutions-based exchange platform
Ligia Noronha, Assistant Secretary-General and Head of UNEP, and Peter Thomson, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Ocean, opened the meeting. Noronha emphasized that forests and oceans were critical to address climate change, while Thomson noted that the ocean was the great regulator of climate, absorbing around 23 percent of annual emissions of carbon dioxide and more than 90 percent of the excess heat caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
The Dialogue Series aims to help countries recover better from the pandemic and align UN DESA’s work with the Decade of Action. Previous dialogue sessions have addressed food and water, where the FAO Director-General participated, and energy and transport. The next dialogue is expected to take place in June and focus on climate financing and digital solutions.
Related links
- See FAO’s last work on forests and food systems.
- Visit the UN DESA Policy Dialogue series webpage and watch the recording from today’s dialogue on UN DESA’s Facebook page.
- Stay informed on the upcoming launch of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration