The global legal framework on forests: seeing the forest with the trees

Abstract

Forests are vital for sustainable development, covering nearly a third of Earth’s landmass, harboring most terrestrial biodiversity, storing nearly half of land-based carbon, and creating and stabilizing soils. Yet, forests and trees are being lost rapidly in many parts of the world, and States have been unable to negotiate a comprehensive global forest treaty. This has left forest governance fragmented across a multitude of treaties, undermining its ability to contribute to the conservation and sustainable use of global forests and world nature in general. This book takes a bifurcated approach to the challenge of improving global forest governance. First, it examines the historical origins of the fragmented international legal framework on forests from the Early Modern Period to the era of sustainable development (1400-2015). Second, it assesses in detail the work of the Convention on Biological Diversity, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (the so-called Rio Conventions) on forests to determine if they can now be interpreted to form a global legal framework on forests that overcomes the fragmentation that historically defines international forest law.