Introduction

Forests are a critical resource to sustain life and ecosystems around the world (see examples). Sustainable forests provide services that can be available for future generations, while contributing benefits to people and the environment. A sustainable forest, in its simplest form, is defined as a forest which is managed to result in the replacement of trees which are felled with seedlings that eventually grow into mature trees, whose life cycle ranges from one to over thirty years. If replacement is not done, it results in deforestation (reduction in forest area) and forest degradation (reduction in capacity to provide goods and services) which are the two most pressing problems facing the forest sector in many countries today.

Only about a fifth of the original old-growth forests (whose definition is location dependent) still exist. Between 1990 and 2015, the world is estimated to have lost 129 million hectares of forest, an area the size of South Africa – this loss is not just limited to the trees but has cascading impacts on livelihoods, ecosystems, and the climate. Deforestation is the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emission in developing countries. According to the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the World Nature Organization (WNO), land conversion and deforestation in developing countries emits around 1.7 billion tons of carbon annually – the fourth highest cause of global emissions. Explore the details of forest challenges at global and country-scale here and here.

Explore the status of the world’s forests in this interactive map (based on the Hansen dataset):

Efficient management of forests requires updated data on tree species, tree cover, forest area, stock, soil, water, climate, flora and fauna, and people dependent on forests for their growth and livelihoods, land and usufruct rights, etc. to enable policy makers and operational staff to take well informed decisions. Recent advances in information and communication technologies (ICT) in both hardware and software, declining costs of internet connectivity and associated devices (e.g. phones, tablets, computers) have made the collection, validation, analysis, visualization, storage, security, dissemination, and use of large amounts of data and information available to anyone, anytime, anywhere at affordable prices (see a timeline of the evolution of ICT tools and applications in recent decades).

Attention to forests is not limited to what can be done in forestry activities. It is becoming increasingly important to explore the role of other sectors on forests – both to recognize the value of forests to other activities in a larger watershed/landscape context (e.g. for hydrologic and ecosystem services and source protection) and to recognize the impact of work in other sectors on forest (e.g. both negative implications – e.g. roads or agricultural clearing on deforestation, as well as positive implications such as agroforestry or silvipasture). This is central to the concept of forest-smart development to complement sustainable forestry as outlined in the World Bank Group Forest Action Plan. The work on forest-related aspects in a watershed framework has leveraged significant public and private capital and pledges for the future.

Many countries have yet to make use of the opportunity to use information technology to its full potential in the sustainable management of forests and forest-smart development. However, there have been many examples of promising ICT-powered approaches applied for forest and other development challenges that could be of use in designing a new generation of ICT-enabled programs for sustainable forestry. This e-book is an attempt to provide practical examples of proven and cutting-edge ICT technologies that could have potential to better manage this precious resource by providing better data, tools, analysis, and systems to support decisions at various levels (global, regional, national, and local community).

The e-book is a live document which will be updated as frequently as possible and useful. It has been produced with funding from the Program for Forests (PROFOR). It also adds to earlier efforts by PROFOR to showcase the use of ICT. Feedback is appreciated on suggestions to improve the content, presentation and functionality and to showcase any additional ICT tools and application cases for sustainable forest management.

The next module presents a preliminary overview of some of the available ICT tools and applications currently being used in the forest data value chain – from data collection to decision making for sustainable forestry development.