 | State of the Art Review |
Urban forestry includes garden and farm trees, street trees, trees in parks and open spaces; woodlands, trees and woodlands along rivers and trees in farmland (agro-forestry).
Urban forests can improve the quality of urban life and livelihood in many ways, providing
both tangible (e.g. food, energy, timber, fodder) and less tangible environmental and societal
benefits and services, like its contribution to urban greening, nature conservation and biodiversity management, improvement of the urban microclimate (less dust, more shade, lower temperatures), provision of opportunities for recreation, maintenance of buffer zones nd protection of urban water resources.
Challenges to urban forest development in developing countries - and elsewhere - are: (i) little
technology transfer, research and information exchange; (ii) inadequate appreciation of the
economic value of the urban forest and low comprehensive valuation of multipurpose urban
forestry; (iii) insufficient local participation and private-public partnerships; (iv) inappropriate
land use policies (access and security of user rights to urban forest); (v) ecological and
technical constraints of the urban environment; (vi) sustaining funds for urban forests, and,
above all, (vii) integration of forestry into urban planning and development. And above all: need to strengthen the role of urban forestry in poverty alleviation.
- For a more extensive introduction and review of literature on this subject please go to State of the Art.
- Go to RUAF publications for an overview of RUAF publications on this topic (most of which are available online). You may also view the articles in the Urban Agriculture Magazine on this topic.
- Search the Bibliographic Database for other literature references, abstracts and online documents on this subject.