Enhancing Ecologically Sustainable Management of Deadwood in Kenya’s Natural Forests

Chunho Yeom,Sylvester Ngome Chisika,Ahmad A. Omar

doi:10.1155/2021/6647618

Chunho Yeom, Sylvester Ngome Chisika + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/6647618

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Abstract

The need for ecologically sustainable management of natural forests has assumed greater prominence in conservation and climate change discourses. However, the identification of deadwood, a critical component of natural forests, continues to receive little attention around the world. Through a review of the existing literature, this study sought to promote consciousness and awareness on the value of deadwood using the case of Kenya’s natural forests in the wider context of biodiversity conservation and climate change. Results substantiate that deadwood in natural forests performs a vital function in forest biological and ecological functions. However, forest degradation through the removal of deadwood, even though widely neglected, results in considerable biodiversity loss and might alter natural forest ecosystems, thereby exacerbating the impacts of climate change. In Kenya, despite the recent sophistication of forest management tools, including the development of the Draft Forest Policy, 2020, and enactment of the Forest Conservation and Management Act, 2016, to increasingly recognize the more progressive forest management paradigms such as participatory forest management in natural forest management, the current deadwood management practice is faulty and could yield outcomes contrary to the policy intentions and the wider provisions of ecologically sustainable forest management. It is because major policy documents lack robust and explicit guidelines on achieving ecologically sustainable management of deadwood despite its centrality in providing ecosystem services and as a highly dependable source of energy resources for over 70% of the Kenyan population. Moreover, deadwood management appears to be affected by many complex biological, technical, policy, and socioeconomic factors that appear to be acting together against sustainable deadwood management. Still, perhaps most importantly, the absence of research on the topic is the most outstanding challenge. Therefore, in the future, improving the sustainable management of natural forests will require the restoration of deadwood and increasing consciousness on the value of deadwood through more research studies.

Highlights

Natural forests provide many ecosystem services needed for biodiversity conservation and sustainable management [1, 2]
In the wake of climate change concerns acting together with the growing human population accompanied by the seemingly unsustainable production and consumption patterns, especially related to wood energy resources and other existential threats, deforestation threatens the capacity of natural forests to generate benefits to the society in line with the ecologically sustainable forest management paradigm
SD and its derivatives have been contested on account of being open to many interpretations, and there is a problem with creating sustainability indicators [45, 46]. Other concepts such as ecologically sustainable forest management (ESFM) are increasingly becoming popular, albeit in certain regions of the globe in the context of forest management. e primary goals of ESFM are maintaining the vitality of forest ecosystems, which covers ecological processes within forests, maintaining the biological diversity of forests, and managing the net social benefit derived from the mixture of forest uses [47, 48]

Summary

Introduction

Natural forests provide many ecosystem services needed for biodiversity conservation and sustainable management [1, 2]. In the wake of climate change concerns acting together with the growing human population accompanied by the seemingly unsustainable production and consumption patterns, especially related to wood energy resources and other existential threats, deforestation threatens the capacity of natural forests to generate benefits to the society in line with the ecologically sustainable forest management paradigm. While discourses on deforestation have gained recognition in this era of climate change, the plunder and degradation of natural forests, due to legally sanctioned removal of deadwood, goes unnoticed by the society and generally remains an understudied subject area around the globe [4, 6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13]

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Conclusion