As a member of the Forestry and Climate Change Partnership (FCCP), we are delighted to have come together with fellow forestry, conservation and government organisations to reaffirm our commitment to working together to promote the importance of adapting trees, woods and forests to climate change.
Published today, the FCCP’s Forestry and Climate Change Adaptation Accord sets out a collective vision that Britain’s trees woods and forests are resilient to climate change and therefore able to meet their full potential to provide environmental, social and economic benefits.
Climate change and the associated environmental impacts including drought, flooding, fire, pests and pathogens present serious threats to the health of our trees woods and forests. There is an urgent need to improve the resilience of both newly created and existing woodland to climate change. This requires significant change to widely accepted and practised systems of woodland and land management. Greater awareness is needed for the importance of adopting a broader range of species, diversity of genetics, age and stand structure, and improved connectivity in the landscape.
The Institute’s FCCP Representative, Martin Glynn FICFor CEnv, will work with other group members to communicate the case for adaptation, to provide training and education, inform research priorities and contribute to policy development.
Dr Gabriel Hemery FICFor, Chief Executive of the Sylva Foundation and Chair of the FCCP said:
“The recently renamed Forestry and Climate Change Partnership represents an unusual level of collaboration and a powerful agreement to work together to make change happen, fast. Our trees, woods and forests are faced with unprecedented rates of climate change and increased environmental threats such as pests and pathogens. Only by working together, and with the support of individual woodland owners and professionals, will we be able to rise to meet these challenges, with an ambition to bounce back better.”
View the Forestry and Climate Change Adaptation Accord on the FCCP’s website here. We encourage like-minded organisations to show their support for the Accord by signing up online.
