Forest and Environment: Developments in Global Change Ecology

Generally, the change in global ecology issue will affect almost all the forest conditions such as forest area, health and biodiversity and may increase growth rates in some areas while endangering the survival of species and forest communities in some other areas. Forest ecosystems are impacted by multiple uses under the influence of global drivers. The need for providing environmental services, forest ecosystem services and goods will be greatly influenced by changes in global ecology, posing some new challenges to forest and environmental sustainability. Societies are being forced to react to their perceptions of the real potential impacts of, the change in global ecology and considered as a result of unsustainable development. Water and desert lands accounts to only areas of the globe without forests, however, climate change on ecosystems as resulted to the development of both forests and environmental policies and legislation. The key development factor is anchored in sustainable forest management (SFM), and sustainable development which has been an influencing factor on the visions for forests, environmental development and associated principles been adopted by international community. SFM and sustainable development is aimed to reduce the risk of damage and possible losses from changing ecological conditions and also to undertake effective mitigation actions. The important factor is for the future opportunities to adapt and mitigate adverse climate change whereby development of ecosystem services that require monitoring for effective policy implementation. Forests and environmental development attracts wide range of management activities that will contribute to maintaining or increasing the adaptive capacity of global change ecology. Various management actions are being put in place and contribute to climate change mitigation through reducing emissions from forests, conserving forest carbon or enhancing forest carbon sinks. Forest carbon management offers potential for some immediate financial benefits. In addition, as a result of global change and climate challenges new international opportunities for financial and technical support for climate change adaptation and sustainable development are emerging.