CIFOR is a non-profit, scientific institution that conducts research on the most pressing challenges of forest and landscape management around the world. CIFOR advances human well-being, equity and environmental integrity by conducting innovative research, developing partners’ capacity, and actively engaging in dialogue with all stakeholders to inform policies and practices that affect forests and people.
CIFOR and ICRAF merged in order to provide the evidence and innovative solutions needed to scale up investment in sustainable development and address the global challenges of our time.
How to integrate the different scales from local to global in the preservation and restoration of forests?
You don’t. Integrating the different scales do not make sense. You develop mechanisms that reinforce the different levels by actions done or policies developed at the other levels. Unfortunately, we have grand global pledges (that remain mostly pledges) and scattered work on the ground (that remains unsupported or unfunded).
Initiatives to fight deforestation or restore forests as well as funding are launched by both private and public actors. How can we strengthen cooperation between these sectors to accelerate action for forests?
The only chance to achieve (at least partially) our restoration goals is to make restoration an economic enterprise. I have said that several times. There is not enough public money, so we need to convince the private sector (from local farmers to large corporations) to invest in restoration. However, this needs to be done in a way that discriminate greenwashing. See my keynote on restoration during the Nairobi GLF.
What are the 3 priority actions to implement to reach the UN Global Forest Goals by 2030 in your opinion?
The answer is rather simple if unpleasant, we won’t achieve these, like we missed all the other targets in the past. The main reason being that (besides the fact many are not realistic), they are non-binding. Hence there is no mechanism for enforcement. Not that this is the same for the Glasgow declaration (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/gcb.16039). So make them binding commitments, find realistic targets, adapt to specific contexts.