Native forests, plantation forests and trees outside forests: their vulnerability and roles in mitigating and building resilience to climate change

Healthy forests and trees are a clear sign of environmental stability, resilience and human wellbeing — the antithesis of desertification, land degradation, vulnerability and poverty. This chapter stresses that the conservation and enrichment of Pacific Island forests and trees outside of forests in both rural and urban settings offers one of the most practicable, cost-effective, culturally and environmentally sound means of addressing climate, environmental, economic and social change, the impacts of which are clearly negatively synergistic. By conserving and enriching forest and arboreal resources, regardless of the main causes of change and the unclear extent to which human-induced climate change is currently and increasingly an important driver, we have an action that can be carried out at national, subnational and community levels. This chapter outlines some of the existing and forecast impacts of human-induced climate change in concert with other drivers of change, and how the conservation, enrichment and sustainable utilisation of forests, trees outside of forests, and arboreal resources can address the seemingly intractable impacts of climate change