Sustainable forest management

Sustainable forest management (SFM) manages forests to provide wood, clean water, wildlife habitat, while maintaining or enhancing their productivity, diversity, and resilience. SFM aims to ensure that forests supply goods and services to meet both present-day and future needs and contribute to the three pillars of sustainability: social, environmental, and economic.

Sustainable forest management creates socially just, ecologically sound, and economically viable outcomes. It offers a holistic approach to ensure forest activities deliver social, environmental, and economic benefits, balance competing needs, and maintain and enhance forest functions now and in the future.

Sustainable forest management involves forward-thinking and responsible management practices. It is necessary to use practices often specifically adapted to each site. One of the most important practices is determining whether the forest has enough natural seeds, seedlings, and tree sprouts to make a future forest. Sustainable forestry is also about maintaining forest health.

Sustainable forest management also helps with climate change adaptation by increasing forest ecosystems' resistance to future climatic hazards and lowering the danger of additional land degradation by repairing and stabilising soils and boosting their water-retention capacity. It contributes to providing a wide range of vital ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation, such as wildlife habitats, recreational amenity values, and various non-timber forest products.