Human survival and well-being ultimately rest on the natural resources of the planet. Forests cover about a third of the world’s land area and provide a wide range of ecosystem services that are crucial for human well-being and sustainable development worldwide. How forests and trees are included in Agenda 2030 and how the efforts undertaken by different sectors to advance towards the 17 SDGs will impact forests, forest ecosystem services, forestrelated livelihoods and human well-being are thus important questions. Little attention, however, has yet focused on these issues, or on how the potential impacts, in turn, will support or undermine the contributions of forests to climate and sustainable development.

Understanding the potential impacts of the SDGs on forests and forest-related livelihoods and development as well as the related trade-offs and synergies is crucial for efforts undertaken to reach these goals. It is especially important for reducing potential negative impacts and to leverage opportunities to create synergies that will ultimately determine whether comprehensive progress towards the SDGs will be accomplished. The 17 SDGs and 169 related targets form an overarching development framework meant to guide government and non-state actor efforts at different scales, from global to local, until 2030.

The SDGs and their targets form a complex, integrated system with clear sectoral emphases, but also strong interlinkages among goals and targets. The agenda does not explicitly address these interlinkages, or the synergies and trade-offs among targets. Planted forests irrigated with treated wastewater in turn improve soil water-storage capacity, reduce soil degradation and erosion, combat desertification in arid areas and provide essential goods that support livelihoods, such as timber, pulpwood and fuelwood (FAO 2018a).

Synergies. Foster innovation to tackle waste through environmentally sound technologies (9.4); Strive for a land degradation-neutral world (15.3); Integrate ecosystem values into planning (15.9); Mobilise finance and provide incentives for sustainable forest management (15.B); Improve multi-stakeholder partnerships (16.7, 17.16)

SDG 15.3 By 2030, combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil, including land affected by desertification, drought and floods, and strive to achieve a land degradation-neutral world
Indicator 15.3.1 Proportion of land that is degraded over total land area

Examples of impact: investment funds include the Mirova Land Degradation Neutrality Fund, launched in 2017, which aims to provide USD 300 million for SDG 15, including sustainable agriculture and forestry. The fund involves contributions from the private sector and government donors (Global Impact Investor Survey 2018). Institutional investors – now the main market participants in developing countries, with more than a thousand pension funds, foundations, insurance companies and others (DANA 2011, Glauner et al. 2012) – show increasing interest in investing in SFM.