SignificanceMost nations recently agreed to hold global average temperature rise to well below 2 °C. We examine how much climate mitigation nature can contribute to this goal with a comprehensive analysis of “natural climate solutions” (NCS): 20 conservation, restoration, and/or improved land management actions that increase carbon storage and/or avoid greenhouse gas emissions across global forests, wetlands, grasslands, and agricultural lands. We show that NCS can provide over one-third of the cost-effective climate mitigation needed between now and 2030 to stabilize warming to below 2 °C. Alongside aggressive fossil fuel emissions reductions, NCS offer a powerful set of options for nations to deliver on the Paris Climate Agreement while improving soil productivity, cleaning our air and water, and maintaining biodiversity.

As the terrestrial human footprint continues to expand, the amount of native forest that is free from significant damaging human activities is in precipitous decline. There is emerging evidence that the remaining intact forest supports an exceptional confluence of globally significant environmental values relative to degraded forests, including imperilled biodiversity, carbon sequestration and storage, water provision, indigenous culture and the maintenance of human health. Here we argue that maintaining and, where possible, restoring the integrity of dwindling intact forests is an urgent priority for current global efforts to halt the ongoing biodiversity crisis, slow rapid climate change and achieve sustainability goals. Retaining the integrity of intact forest ecosystems should be a central component of proactive global and national environmental strategies, alongside current efforts aimed at halting deforestation and promoting reforestation.

Intact forest landscapes have the greatest conservation value but are shrinking due to industrial logging and fragmentation.

ABSTRACT. Protection of large natural forest landscapes is a highly important task to help fulfill different international strategic initiatives to protect forest biodiversity, to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and to stimulate sustainable forest management practices. This paper introduces a new approach for mapping large intact forest landscapes (IFL), defined as an unbroken expanse of natural ecosystems within areas of current forest extent, without signs of significant human activity, and having an area of at least 500 km 2 . We have created a global IFL map using existing fine-scale maps and a global coverage of high spatial resolution satellite imagery. We estimate the global area of IFL within the current extent of forest ecosystems (forest zone) to be 13.1 million km 2 or 23.5% of the forest zone. The vast majority of IFL are found in two biomes: Dense Tropical and Subtropical Forests (45.3%) and Boreal Forests (43.8%). The lowest proportion of IFL is found in Temperate Broadleaf and Mixed Forests. The IFL exist in 66 of the 149 countries that together make up the forest zone. Three of them-Canada, Russia, and Brazil-contain 63.8% of the total IFL area. Of the world's IFL area, 18.9% has some form of protection, but only 9.7% is strictly protected, i.e., belongs to IUCN protected areas categories I-III. The world IFL map presented here is intended to underpin the development of a general strategy for nature conservation at the global and regional scales. It also defines a baseline for monitoring deforestation and forest degradation that is well suited for use with operational and cost-effective satellite data. All project results and IFL maps are available on a dedicated web site (http://www.intactforests.org).

One sentence summary: 2Previously unreported forest areas in dryland biomes increase current estimates of the 3 global forest cover by at least 9 %. 4 List of authors:

While sustainable forest management (SFM) policy processes are well developed, implementation on the ground remains a challenge. Given the diversity of biophysical conditions, economic histories and governance systems on the European continent, regionally and temporally adapted and adaptive solutions are needed for both social and ecological systems. To illustrate this, we apply (1) a biographic forest and woodland history approach to central Sweden's Bergslagen region, where boreal sustained yield forestry was widely applied first and (2) a comparative case study approach using five European landscapes that represent different forest history phases in Scotland, Germany, Ukraine and Russia. Additionally, we illustrate the need to learn from reference landscapes for natural forest and cultural woodland systems such as in economically remote regions in Romania, Russia and on the Iberian Peninsula. We conclude that there is great opportunity for innovative knowledge production about both governance and management for different SFM dimensions based on comparisons among concrete landscapes. In addition, there is a need to develop local place-based social learning processes that are characterized by a focus on a geographical area, commitment to SFM policy visions and collaborative approaches to development that include both ecological and social systems.

Existing guidelines and best-practices documents do not satisfy, at present, the need for guiding implementation of Forest and Landscape Restoration (FLR) based on core principles. Given the wide range of FLR practices and the varied spectrum of actors involved, a single working framework is unlikely to be effective, but tailored working frameworks can be co-created based on a common conceptual framework (i.e., a common core set of principles and a generalized set of criteria and indicators). We present background regarding FLR concepts, definitions, and principles, and discuss the challenges that confront effective and long-term implementation of FLR. We enumerate the many benefits that a transformative criteria and indicators framework can bring to actors and different sectors involved in restoration when such framework is anchored in the FLR principles. We justify the need to co-develop and apply specifically tailored working frameworks to help ensure that FLR interventions bring social, economic, and environmental benefits to multiple stakeholders within landscapes and adjust to changing conditions over time. Several examples of working FLR frameworks are presented to illustrate the goals and needs of communities, donors and investors, and government agencies. Transparency, feedback, communication, assessment, and adaptive management are important components of all working frameworks. Finally, we describe existing FLR guidelines and what we can learn from them. Working frameworks can be developed and used by different actors who seek to initiate an FLR process and to align restoration actions at different scales and levels.

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