FOREST RESTORATION—THE THIRD BIG SILVICULTURAL CHALLENGE

The recent conference on ‘Reclamation, Rehabilitation and Restoration: Towards a Greener Asia’ held in Kuala Lumpur in July 2012 revealed a vigorous programme of research is under way across the region that seeks to restore forests cover to degraded lands. The conference illustrated several things. One was that this work is taking place in a large variety of field situations. These include marginal agricultural lands, heavily logged forests, old mine sites, and deforested and eroding coastal areas. The second theme emerging from the conference was that much of this work aims to restore forest cover in order to improve the delivery of ecosystem services rather than to simply produce timber. This means using multispecies plantings rather than conventional monocultures. I review here some of the main issues emerging at the conference and some of the outstanding questions still needing to be resolved. But before doing this, it is useful to put the subject of the conference within a broader historical context.