The world's forests cover approximately 3,500 million hectares, or about 30% of the total land area excluding Greenland and Antarctica. About 57% of those forests, mostly tropical, are located in developing countries. Between 1980 and 1995, the total area of forest decreased by about 180 million hectares as a result of human activities.  Fragmentation, unsustainable logging of mature forests and other types of forest degradation have also occurred over large areas. With the decrease of areas of mature “untouched” forests, secondary forest will be gaining in importance and become a prominent source of timber and non-timber forest products. Sustainable forest management is very important for fostering long-term income generation opportunities and environmental services for the poor.

Forest diversity conservation requires strategies for managing biodiversity in landscape mosaics. Forest biodiversity conservation in rural landscape mosaics may be done through the development of integrated approaches and solutions in line with the Millennium Development Goals.

Climate change is expected to increase the probability of extreme weather events such as hurricanes and droughts and the accompanying fires, pests and diseases are predicted to also increase.  Poor people within developing countries are often the most vulnerable to climate change.  One of the major challenges is to reduce the vulnerability of climate sensitive sectors such as forestry, energy and water resources, to today’s climate variability and to ensure that future development activities are taking predicted climatic conditions into account.

To support these research agendas, ENV Programme is working on research topics of:

1. Sustainable Use of Forests
2. Biodiversity in Fragmented Landscapes
3. Forest Ecosystem Services