Study Shows Importance of Forests and Trees for Water, With Wide Implications
Forests and trees are drivers of key mechanisms that govern the water cycle, atmospheric moisture, precipitation and climate at the local, regional and continental levels.
Altogether, these findings have significant implications for policy and action, and for research – particularly for FTA research – and what it can do or the tools it can provide to inform and underpin this new agenda.
In climate policy, it calls for a change of narrative, in which forests (looked at as carbon reservoirs) will play a fundamental role in the world’s adaptation, to preserve the water cycle for agriculture and for food security. Forests and trees can be a cornerstone of the adaptation article (Article 7) of the Paris Agreement.
In land restoration, it gives perspective on how to better understand which trees to plant where and how or what natural regeneration to assist.
In water policy, we should not only look to where the rain goes (the watershed) but to where it comes from (the “precipitationshed”), which opens up a whole new perspective on institutions and incentives for action (including the repartition of costs and benefits).
It is not often in research that efforts lead to considering possible “changes of theory” and such-wide ranging implications. The next challenge for research is both internal and external: for us to better quantify and assess the magnitude of these relations, providing clarity about uncertainties and validity domains (including on the diversity of local-specific situations), and to avoid oversimplification.
Luigi Guarino