Implications of the UN Sustainable Development Goals for the world's forests

The advent of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provided a framework that explicitly embedded the conservation of natural ecosystems among other development objectives. Fundamental to the SDGs is the notion that interactions can occur between their constituent goals and targets in the form of synergies and trade-offs, and that, wherever possible, the former should be promoted and the latter mitigated. Using the conservation of forests (relevant to several SDG targets) as a case study, this thesis seeks to better understand how progress in non-environmental aspects of the development agenda could facilitate or hinder this cause. Through a systematic review, I identify 63 SDG targets associated with potentially beneficial, damaging or mixed impacts on forests, and highlight how potentially damaging targets are often better researched and understood. Using open access data for 122 countries, I explore the empirical relationships between achievement of the SDGs and changes in net forest cover between 2017 and 2020. These analyses suggest that higher achievements in goals on health, education, energy, economy and industry are associated with lower net forest loss, while the processes of improving in goals on economy and climate change mitigation are associated with higher net forest loss. I present a novel framework that combines document analysis and indicator data for 24 SDG targets, to assess the possible implications of a country’s anticipated development trajectory for forests. Applying this to framework to 48 tropical countries, I highlight key areas of each country’s national development agenda that should be monitored or prioritised in order to avoid risks, seize opportunities, and provide enabling conditions for effective forest conservation. The thesis concludes with a summary of the major findings, a discussion the novel contributions and limitations of the work, and suggestions for further work that could help progress the topic further.