Sustainable Forestry Under Changing Climate

Abstract

Climatic perturbation is the major event in the present era that has put the survivality of human civilization under severe threat. Forests are natural boon for us to combat the mega event of climate change. Apart from mitigating climate change, the forests are providing livelihood for community stakeholders, meet up energy demand, provide fodder and fuel and produce various non-timber forest products (NTFPs). Consideration of different multidimensional role of forest is essential for survivality of human civilization. As per the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), mitigating climate change through forest appears to be up to 14.0% at various sectors. On the other hand, forests are supporting livelihood security for more than 300 million people of India and meet the energy demand of rural India up to 40.0%, and to provide support for domesticated animals up to one-third. But the existence of forest is under threat due to the rapid growth of human civilization, resource dependency and unsustainable use of forest resources. Therefore, climate change is showing its impact over forests at various levels such as in the form of productive traits, C (carbon) dynamics, vegetation shift and depletion of soil resources. To combat such problems, sustainable forest management (SFM) is a suitable answer as it addresses multidimensional way by reducing resource dependency on one hand and promoting livelihood option for forest dwellers on the other hand. This chapter deals with SFM practices under the changing scenario of climate change. SFM promotes increase in forest cover which further helps to combat and adapt to climate change events. In this way SFM becomes an integrated approach of sustainable management and conservation of natural resources.