The United Nations Forum on Forests has highlighted the need to properly manage forests and trees in drylands.

An article on Go For Wood outlines how dry forests cover about 40 per cent of the Earth’s surface, providing important services such as fuel, wood and medicines as well as buffering against drought and desertification.

Drylands face many challenges, including “deforestation, degradation and desertification, driven by adverse land-use policies and subsidies, poor governance and a lack of investment in their sustainable management and restoration,” says the article.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says that when forests and trees in drylands are managed properly, they combat desertification and help to alleviate poverty. The organization has developed draft guidelines which aim to support the restoration of 150 million hectares of degraded lands worldwide by 2020.

It is believed that more than two billion hectares of land worldwide are suitable for rehabilitation through forest and landscape restoration, much of this through practices that combine forests and trees with other land uses such as agroforestry.

Read the full story: Participants at UN forum call for sustainable management of dry forests