Last thursday, the 26th of September 2019, the Working Party on the Management of Mountain Watersheds (WPMMW), a technical body under the umbrella of the European Forestry Commission (EFC), established in 1950, met in Innsbruck to discuss "Protective Functions of Forests in a Changing Climate". The meeting was organised by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Sustainability and Tourism, the Province of Tyrol and FAO. The program of the meeting can be found here. The main take home messages were:
- Forests reduce natural hazard risks, they do not provide 100% protection (the same accounts for human made structural measures)
- Forests should be an integral part of risk management strategies
- Legal frameworks for implementing protection forests are largely available / in force - it just has to be done and not only in the Alps
- Major challenges for protection forests are:
- regeneration of forests (ensuring establishment and growth of young trees that overtake the proecrive role of older ones in the future)
- climate change (i.e., changing regimes in insect outbreaks, pests and diseases, forest fires and windthrow, drought stress)
- manpower and financial resources to ensure long-term sustainable management
