Ecosystems - forests

This report brings together 27 indicators of human and ecosystem wellbeing using IUCN's pioneering Sustainability Assessment method. It is intended to complement Wellbeing Scores software, which allows users to explore different standards and combinations of what comprises sustainable development. The publication may provoke debate amongst forest conservationists and critics and provide them with a platform for exploring this new software.

The Loita/Purko Naimina Enkiyio forest is estimated to cover an area of 330 km2 in Kenya and serves several functions within the Loita Maasai community. When a change of the forest tenure to a reserve threatened this community, they challenged the decision and were successful in having the decision rescinded. Security of tenure can be considered the single most important factor in the sustainable management of natural resources. This publication compares three different tenure regimes and discusses how they might affect the local Maasai community.

Mitigating the impact of climate change presents governments and communities throughout the world with one of the main environmental challenges of our times. This publication provides an overview of the opportunities and challenges for carbon sequestration activities in the forestry and agricultural sectors of both industrialized and developing countries. It outlines a set of strategies and approaches seeking to ensure that forest and other land-use climate change mitigation measures deliver sustainable development benefits in an equitable and cost-effective manner.

The regions of Eastern and Southern Africa, embracing the countries of Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia(land), Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Lesotho, Swaziland and South Africa display a great richness and diversity of cultures and peoples, geographical features and biodiversity. This complexity has created great diversity in resource use and management by rural people.

Forest loss and degradation carry a heavy human and environmental cost throughout tropical, temperate and boreal regions. In response, IUCN, WWF and various government and non-government partners have developed the Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) approach, which focuses on restoring the goods, services and ecological processes that forests can provide at the broader landscape level. While FLR is globally relevant, some captivating and interesting examples of restoration have come from East Africa. Three examples are highlighted in this booklet.