25th Annual ISTF Conference. Examining Tropical Changes: Resilience in the Context of Disturbance and Transgression

The Yale Chapter of the International Society of Tropical Foresters is proud to announce the 25th Annual Conference which will take place January 31-February 2, 2019 at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (New Haven, CT, USA).

Tropical forests and the indigenous people are experiencing disturbances and transgressions at unprecedented scales, raising new questions about the resilience of these socio-ecological systems. Overexploitation of tropical forests transgresses national and international laws, often trespassing on the rights of indigenous and local communities whose livelihoods depend on these landscapes. Intensifying anthropogenic activities are changing climates, altering natural disturbance regimes, and pushing tropical ecosystems close to their ecological limits. In spite of these pressures, will tropical systems continue to support biodiversity and human communities, contributing to the resilience of the planet as a whole?

Resilience pertains to the ability to respond to and recover from stressful events. The concept of resilience has evolved in recent years, as new ideas emerge about what enables tropical forests and peoples to recover and persist. Similarly, the notion of disturbance has also changed, as ‘disturbance’ implies deviation from a pattern, but scholars now recognize that some perturbations might be inherent to tropical ecosystems. Transgressions challenge borders and boundaries, both real and imagined, and put pressure on forest resources and communities. The resilience of tropical forest systems declines under mounting ecological and anthropogenic pressures, as reflected in decreasing recovery rates from perturbations and increasing displacement of frontline communities. Global efforts have been dedicated to preventing, mitigating and bringing attention to problems within tropical systems. There is also much to be learned from how tropical forests and local peoples cope with and recover from distress and transgressions.

Over the last 25 years, many mechanisms and tools have emerged to identify threats and increase resilience in tropical forests, yet the competing pressures on forests have not been reconciled. As climate change disturbances and human transgressions continue to worsen, actions and solutions must be delivered at a much faster pace. Since 1994, the Yale Chapter ISTF annual conferences have addressed global priorities including illegal logging, conservation finance, conflict and cooperation, landscape-scale restoration, ecotourism, certification schemes, food, and biodiversity. The 25th Annual Yale ISTF Conference will demand reflection on past lessons while envisioning the next 25 years of tropical forestry in a rapidly changing world.

The 2019 ISTF Conference invites academics, practitioners, policy-makers, activists and forest-dwelling peoples to share the challenges and opportunities in tropical forest landscapes and the perseverance required for these complex networks in the face of global disturbances.