The paper is part of an FAO-led process to prepare climate change guidelines for forest managers. It reviews the main perceived challenges that climate change poses to forests and their managers throughout the world. It indicates a number of gaps in enabling conditions (related to knowledge, institutional setting and culture) that hamper forest managers from responding effectively to climate change and its impacts.

The paper documents a significant challenge in the lack of effective monitoring to assess their effectiveness and efficiency of management strategies to address climate change. It concludes that sustainable forest management (SFM) can act as a sound foundation to guide forest managers’ response to climate change, and notes the need for more experience with financial mechanisms to fund both climate change mitigation and adaptation. The paper further provides a number of recommendations for forest managers to better prepare for climate change opportunities and challenges to come. [Publication: Forest Management and Climate Change: a Literature Review]