Mountain forests play a key role in securing mountain livelihoods by providing timber, fuelwood, food, fodder, and medicine. In addition to these provisioning services, they offer cultural services as well as locally and globally significant regulating and supporting services, such as protection from natural hazards, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity. These important services provided by mountain forests have been explicitly acknowledged in 3 targets of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—targets 6.6, 15.1, and 15.4 (https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgs). But what does this imply concretely for research, policy, and practice The Guest Editors of this Focus Issue, Georg Gratzer and William S. Keeton, invited researchers to explore interrelations between the SDGs and forest management issues around the world, in 2 workshop sessions that took place at the ‘‘Mountains of Our Future Earth'' conference in Perth, Scotland (5–8 October 2015). Most of the papers published in this issue of MRD have emerged from these workshops and the subsequent call for papers inviting authors to reflect on the relation between forests and the global sustainable development agenda.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1659/mrd.3703Altmetric score:
Dimensions Citation Count:
Publication year
2017
Authors
Breu T; Molden D; Molden von Dach S; Zimmermann A; Mathez-Stiefel S-L
Language
English
Keywords
livelihoods, fodder, food, timber, fuelwood
