The Sustainable Development Goals, forests, and the role of Australian Forestry

The United Nations (UN) member states adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in September 2015 as part of a UN General Assembly resolution on the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. The 17 SDGs and their associated 169 targets constitute a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity (UNDP undated). Most of the targets are to be achieved by 2030, although some were to have been achieved by 2020. The SDGs, which seek to balance the three dimensions of sustainable development (i.e. economic, social and environmental), supersede the eight Millennium Development Goals adopted to support the 2000 United Nations Millennium Declaration (UNGA 2000). They complement other commitments, such as those made by nations in the Paris Agreement on climate change and the Convention on Biological Diversity. The SDGs address some of the world’s most pressing problems, including hunger, poverty, gender inequality and inequality in general, climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, and the unsustainable use of natural resources. By their short timeframe, they acknowledge the urgency with which these problems must be resolved (or at least ameliorated). None of the SDGs related to the natural-resource base have clear, quantifiable targets. For example, SDG 15.2 (the main forest target) comprises the following: ‘By 2020, promote the implementation of sustainable management of all types of forests, halt deforestation, restore degraded forests and substantially increase afforestation and reforestation globally’. The targets have related indicators (agreed to in 2017), which vary in their quantifiability—for example, indicator 15.1.1 is ‘forest area as a proportion of total land area’, and 15.2.1 is ‘progress towards sustainable forest management’. Most countries conduct regular reviews of their progress towards the SDGs—in the case of Australia, indicators are reported through the Australian Government’s Reporting Platform (Australian Government undated). Moreover, Australia’s State of the Forests report, which has been published every five years since 1998 (e.g. Montreal Process Implementation Group for Australia and National Forest Inventory Steering Committee 2018), provides data directly to the SDGs (Read & Howell 2019). A World Forests, Society and Environment (WFSE) project published what it characterised as a ‘systematic scientific assessment of potential and anticipated impacts of efforts to achieve the SDGs on forests, related socio-economic systems and forest-related development’ (Katila et al. 2020). Table 1 presents the 17 SDGs and, for each SDG, our summary of the main conclusions drawn in the WFSE assessment (with each SDG addressed in separate chapters in Katila et al. 2020) and in the 2018 State of the World’s Forests report produced by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO 2018). The table is intended to be illustrative rather than comprehensive, and it undoubtedly contains debatable elements. Nevertheless, it provides a compelling case for a strong – and in some cases vital – role of forests in achieving all the SDGs; it also makes clear that efforts to achieve many of the SDGs have wide-ranging implications for forests. Coinciding with the time horizon of the SDGs, the UN General Assembly proclaimed the period 2021–2030 as the Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (UNGA 2019), which ‘is a rallying call for the protection and revival of ecosystems all around the world, for the benefit of people and nature’ (UNEP and FAO undated). At the very least, the Decade is a marketing opportunity for encouraging governments, the private sector and communities to invest much more heavily in restoring degraded forest landscapes as a way of improving livelihoods, combating climate change and delivering ecosystem services, thus assisting efforts to achieve the SDGs. Globally, nations have set a goal (through the Bonn Challenge and the New York Declaration on Forests) of restoring at least 350 million ha of degraded forest landscapes by 2030. This could cost USD 1 trillion or more; nevertheless, the benefit:cost ratio has been estimated conservatively at 10–37 (Mills et al. 2020). Forest landscape restoration is only one aspect of the forestry endeavour but it alone will generate a huge need for high-quality science. As signalled by the SDGs, the next decade will be crucial for the future of humanity. Considerable improvements are projected by 2030 in some human development indicators; for example, under Shared Socioeconomic Pathway 2 (SSP2), the number of undernourished people is projected to decline from 800–900 million in 2010 to 300–500 million in 2030 (although this would still be short of the SDG target of zero undernourished people by 2030) (UN Environment 2019). But many key environmental targets are seriously in jeopardy: for example, the projected increase in global warming under SSP2 is 4°C by 2100, which is more than double the aim stated in the Paris Agreement of limiting global warming to less than 2°C by 2100 (UN Environment 2019). Moreover, the continued deterioration of the environment would undermine any gains in human development indicators. Averting catastrophic environmental and hence developmental outcomes will require a concerted and efficient global effort, and high-quality science has a vital role to play. This