Become a member
Membership of IUFRO is open to any institution concerned with the promotion, support or conduct of research related to forests, trees and forest products.
The objective of this unit is to foster interdisciplinary discussion and advance knowledge about the varied ways that individuals and institutions understand, know, interact with and value nature in the context of decisions and policies for forests and biodiversity conservation.
STATE OF KNOWLEDGE
From satellites to smart-phones to digital sequence information, new and potentially disruptive technologies are transforming the ways that nature and biodiversity are known and forests conserved. Alongside these and other technological innovations, and in response to long-standing critiques of colonial and ‘fortress conservation‘ that have resulted in human rights abuses and dispossesion, new actors and governance models, specifically those that are Indigenous-led, are gaining traction. Finally, as the impacts of global climate change and other drivers manifest in particular locales, conservationists are considering (and increasingly applying) novel conservation interventions like assisted migration that only a few years ago were considered unjustifiable acts of hubris. This unit explores the social, ethical and political complexities of these and other changes as they shape decisions and policies at the intersection of forests and nature conservation.