News

Article in IUFRO News 1, 2008:
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IUFRO at the United Nations Climate Change Conference
and “Forest Day”, Bali

The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesia, was held from 3-15 December 2007. The conference involved a series of events that were attended by a total of about 10,800 participants from various nations.

In parallel with the UN Climate Change Conference, a “Forest Day” was organized by CIFOR and co-hosted by CPF partner organizations including IUFRO. The Forest Day was convened in order to reinforce the momentum and inform the discussions related to forests under negotiation at the Bali Climate Conference. It was attended by more than 800 participants, comprising both forest and climate experts.

IUFRO contributed to the Forest Day in three ways: it served as an official co-host of the Forest Day; it organized a side event on “Linking decision-making with knowledge about forest adaptation to climate change – the contribution of the Joint CPF Initiative on Science and Technology”; and it was formally represented in the high-level closing plenary by the IUFRO President.

Forest issues have featured more strongly on the agenda of the UNFCCC than ever before. Through its decision on REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation), the global climate community has agreed to take “meaningful action” towards addressing the problem of deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries. Through this decision, a key item on the agenda of “traditional” international forest policy fora has finally been firmly placed on the climate agenda. A key challenge in the context of REDD will be to take into adequate consideration the social dimension of REDD as well as the multiple services provided by forests. This may offer interesting entry points for the science collaboration in IUFRO.

Through the inclusion of an entire section on enhanced action on adaptation, the Bali Conference acknowledged that adaptation constitutes a central building block of a post-2012 climate agreement. In this context, the Bali Action Plan, among others, stipulates the consideration of “ways to strengthen the catalytic role of the Convention in encouraging multilateral bodies, the public and private sectors and civil society, building on synergies among activities and processes, as a means to support adaptation in a coherent and integrated manner.” The newly established IUFRO-led Expert Panel on Adaptation of Forests to Climate Change constitutes such a synergistic collaborative process and offers the potential for a specific thematic contribution by IUFRO. All side event presentations can be downloaded at http://www.iufro.org/science/science-initiative/resources/

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