Sustainable forest management in the developing world: Science challenges and contributions

Forests are a global resource and important issues dealing with their use and maintenance cannot be effectively dealt with in an insular fashion. Global participation is mandatory, if these resources are to be sustained and equitably utilized. The seriousness and urgency of most of the forestry and environmental problems are linked to the inability or means of developing countries to provide appropriate scientific and technical knowledge, effective policy, regulations and planning frameworks to deal with the problems. To fully understand and appreciate the challenges to forest science, it is useful to establish an appropriate background against which they should be viewed, and suggest how to improve our capability to deliver knowledge for a sustainable future. There are three keys to making this a reality: information, innovation, and implementation — all derived from human resources.