At the IUCN Forest Conservation Programme, we work on forest projects daily. These projects are based in all parts of the world, cut across different IUCN regions and involve people at all levels - local, national, regional and international; and include communities, governments, civil society and the private sector. Our operational approach of linking policy and practice, joint programming and partnerships enables us to participate in, contribute to and draw on a wide spectrum of forest-related work that is undertaken by our other colleagues and partners both within and outside the Union. Further, the membership-based nature of IUCN allows us to reach out to our over 1000 members and bring in their collective expertise and experience on forest conservation issues.

This wealth of experience, strongly rooted in the field and based on ground realities, supplies us with the successes and challenges from which we learn. These lessons then form the basis of the wider work that we do in the policy arena, enabling us to identify, focus on and articulate the issues that are of most relevance to the sector. Likewise, our experiences from the international, regional and national-level policy work are used to inform forest managers and practitioners at the national and field levels of the latest trends, opportunities and threats that can impact upon their work, thereby making the policy-practice linkage a mutually beneficial process.

The following sections elaborate the work of the IUCN Forest Conservation Programme and highlight some of the key lessons learned by us in our main areas of focus.

Forest Landscape Restoration Poverty and Conservation Forest Fires Protected Areas Climate Change Temperate and Boreal Forests Forest Governance International Forest Policy

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