This book was stimulated by discussions held at the third meeting of the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) on the relationship, as applied to forests, between sustainable forest management (SFM) and the Ecosystem Approach Principles developed under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). It also responds to a decision at the 6th Conference of the Parties of the CBD seeking clarification of the relations between the two concepts. The book grew out of a workshop held in May 2004 in Begnins, Switzerland. This meeting brought together a group of 20 people representing forest managers, academics, specialists in integrated approaches to natural resources management and forest conservation practitioners from about 15 countries. The group shared experiences on recent trends in sustainable forest management concepts and in the use of various forms of ecosystem approaches to forest conservation and management problems. The case studies in this book were, with the exception of the Australia chapter, written by persons attending the Begnins workshop. But the workshop also triggered an intense set of interactions amongst both the participants and people from the wider IUCN network on issues related to ecosystem approaches and sustainable forest management. We have drawn heavily on this network of experts and on the rich recent literature on SFM and ecosystem approaches in editing this volume.
