Climate change jeopardizes the delivery of goods and ecosystem services from forests and trees that are essential to livelihoods and food security, to environmental sustainability and to national development.

Climate-smart forestry requires more widespread application of sustainable forest management (SFM) principles that provide a fundamental foundation for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Mainstreaming climate change into forest policy and practice enables the finding of synergies and the management of trade-offs with other forest management objectives. 

CSA in the forest sector entails designing adaptation actions targeted at the most vulnerable communities and sectors of the population (e.g. Indigenous, women, youth, elderly) and forest systems (e.g. dryland, mountain, coastal forests).