Billions of people around the world rely on forests to meet their needs for food, energy and shelter. For them and the millions of people who depend on food from forests and trees to increase the nutritional quality and diversity of their diets, the provision of forest goods and services needs to continue on a regular and reliable basis. Building resilience addresses these needs, both directly and indirectly.

In looking at how forests can make lives and livelihoods more resilient, we must first consider sustainable forest management – maintaining all forest values in perpetuity. Sustainable forest management diversifies options – for the forest ecosystems themselves and for the livelihoods depending on them, and thus creates resilience to climate change.

The events will highlight best cases, opportunities and challenges to building resilience across different forest ecosystems (including drylands), regions and production systems.

To allow for greater participation and inclusion of abstracts, the sessions will be held in different formats – panel discussion, world café and speed geeking (to exchange information quickly).