Multifunctionality of Forests: A White Paper on Challenges and Opportunities in China and Germany

Abstract

Both in Germany and in China, there is strong expertise regarding the different aspects of forest management, as well as forest products management. Nevertheless, forestry in both countries is facing challenges, some of which are regional, but many of which are shared. Therefore, experts from both countries (Technical University of Munich Germany; Northwest A&F University Yangling, China; Forestry Academy of Shaanxi, China; Thünen Institut, Germany; FEDRC GIZ Forest Policy Facility (Forestry Economics Development and Research Center of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH), Germany; and Center for Natural Forest Protection in Shaanxi, China) met to share their knowledge and deduce recommendations for future multifunctional forest management for the temperate zone. The workshop, held at the Northwest A&F University in September 2018, included presentations and intensive discussions, as well as a field tour. The results of the workshop that are summarized in this white paper are meant to provide an overview of the multi-faceted nature of the topic for interested scientists and forest practitioners, describe tools that can be used to analyze various aspects of multifunctionality and, in an exemplary fashion, highlight gathered experience from long- and short-term experiments. Included are social demands, economic goals, and scientific baselines. The topics reach from economic evaluations of forest ecosystem services over forest management practices, including afforestation, restoration, and preparations to face climate change, to wood/forest products utilization and participation of local people for poverty reduction. Overall, an optimistic picture emerges, showing that by using adapted forest management practices, which try to embrace the concept of multifunctionality, various use schemes and demands can be integrated at single sites, allowing us to achieve both environmental protection and productive forests, including societal demands, as well as aspects of tradition and national identity.

Where should China practice forestry in a warming world?

“…Compared with natural forests, plantation forests are generally much poorer at sequestering atmospheric carbon and creating habitats, are more sensitive and vulnerable to climate change, and have fewer ecological service functions (Crouzeilles et al, 2017; Lewis et al, 2019; Yu et al, 2018). Native species planting and the multipurpose and close‐to‐nature management of plantation forests offer good solutions to achieve adaptive management, maintain ecological integrity, and enhance forest resilience to climate change (Ahrends et al, 2017; Benz et al, 2020; Lewis et al, 2019). Predictions of the natural climax vegetation types for each region provide the appropriate reference conditions to restore biodiversity, ecological functioning, and services and carry out the multipurpose and close‐to‐nature management of planted forests.…”

Efficient, Sustainable, and Multifunctional Carbon Offsetting to Boost Forest Management: A Comparative Case Study

“…Indeed, while collective action operates well when social distances are small, scaling-up to higher spatial levels of organization favors market-and state-based institutions [30]. The same applies to the local adaptation of the concept of multifunctional forestry [47,52].…”

Management of Multiple Ecosystem Services under Climate Change, Bioeconomy and Participation

“…They emphasize the need for a multi-level perspective; appropriate spatial resolution, structured involvement of key stakeholders; harmonization of hierarchical planning processes; the appropriate methods and tools for encapsulating the ecological, economic, and social complexity of forest ecosystem management to provide an efficient plan; information about tradeoffs between ecosystem services; and the sensitivity of the plan to uncertain parameters (e.g., prices, climate change). Benz et al [14] analyze the views and experiences of scientists and forest practitioners in Germany and China in terms of the multi-faceted nature of forest management and the tools used to analyze various aspects of multifunctionality, including economic evaluations of ES, afforestation, and restoration to address climate change, and participation of local people for poverty reduction. They have highlighted that multi-functionality is a central goal of sustainable forest management under dynamic social and environmental conditions; biodiversity conservation and climate change are the bases, and an integral part of, the overall planning process; multiple actor-based multi-criteria scenario analysis is a requirement for knowledge-based planning; and new silvicultural tools are needed to balance ecological, economic, and social expectations adapted to local conditions.…”