Presentations

Forest restoration projects used to focus on the establishment of single or a small number of species. This simplified approach, overlooking the ecological restoration principles, hampers the effectiveness of ecosystem recovery. Recently, a shift away from large-scale monospecific afforestation projects, to a holistic approach with multiple objectives, combining several socioeconomic and environmental benefits is observed.

The Mediterranean region is a hot-spot of climate change. The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change identifies the Mediterranean as one of the regions most vulnerable to the impacts of global warming. By 2100, the Mediterranean climate is predicted to experience an average temperature increase of 2°C to 4°C.

Securing the sustainable management and use of natural resources in a context of high social and ecological fragility (e.g., social change, globalization) and providing quality employment for rural communities, are two of the main challenges for sustainable development in the Mediterranean region.

The importance attached to scaling-up adaptation and and reinforcing adaptation planning is clearly recognized in the Paris Agreement. The INDCs/NDCs of many developing countries include adaptation planning as a priority. This session highlighted perspectives from countries, support agencies and funds on the formulation and implementation of the NAPs process, and provide an outlook on future needs.

In Lebanon, afforestation has been the primary focus to combat desertification and achieve/respond to national restoration goals. Although afforestation projects implicitly englobe results that contribute to the combat against climate change, most of these projects were not designed to explicitly implement mitigation and adaptation measures.

The State of Mediterranean Forests 2018 (http://www.fao.org/3/CA2081EN/ca2081en.PDF) establishes that tourism is one of the primary drivers of environmental degradation, along with urbanization, transport, business and industry, and agricultural developments.

In the Mediterranean, Forest and Land Restoration (FLR) is recognized as an effective option to achieve commitments under the Rio Conventions, the Agenda 2030, as well as the United Nations Forum on Forests.