Climate change could have a devastating impact on nearly one billion people living in and depending on forests unless immediate action was taken, researchers from the Bogor based Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) warned. The warning is made in the CIFOR report Facing an Uncertain Future: How Forests and People can Adapt to Climate Change, which will be launched during the Poznan conference. The report sets out adaptive measures aimed to reduce the vulnerability of forests and forest-dependent communities. “The first (measure) is to buffer ecosystems against climate-related disturbances like improving fire management to reduce the risk of uncontrolled wildfires or the control of invasive species,” said Bruno Locatelli, a CIFOR scientist and lead author of the report. “The second would help forests to evolve toward new states better suited to the altered climate. In this way we evolve with the changing climate rather than resist it.”
