 Dry Forest in Africa cover an area of 31 million square kilometres, so they're an enormous ecotype, if you like. They cover a vast area in West, Central, East and Southern Africa, and that's where most of the people live in Africa. They play an enormous role ecologically in terms of environmental services, but also provisioning for people who rely on them for their food security, and they also are extremely important reservoirs for carbon. So we should think more about dry forests. They've been pretty much marginalised because the focus has been on the humid tropical forests, which have been disappearing at an enormous rate, as we know, but the dry forests have been equally affected. But because it's such a large biome, it's been very much on the periphery of the development and research agenda thus far. I think the sort of whole paradigm about saving the forest has been focused on the tropical forest because of the biodiversity angle. Dry forests are slightly less biodiverse in some ways, but in some forests they're not, and they exhibit incredible biodiversity and complexity. One of the things we're trying to do is change that perception and get the dry forests back on the agenda to basically highlight their importance, both for livelihoods, but also for their biodiversity importance. I think one of the major thrusts of our research is looking into how people adapt to climate change, and dry forests are particularly susceptible to climate change, particularly in terms of the droughts that have hit East Africa, in particular Kenya, Somalia, and we're seeing a major famine now in the Horn of Africa precipitated by extreme weather events, whether they're climate driven or whether they're extreme weather events is a moot point. But essentially, people are having to adapt to more extreme conditions. And dry forests are characterized by having a three month long dry season. That dry season is increasingly becoming longer, and that's affecting people's ability to grow the crops that they rely on, but also harvest products from the dry forests that they need. So people are having to adapt much quicker in dry forest regions than they are in much more humid areas where there's less of that climatic extreme going on. People's traditional agricultural systems are being undermined. Once that happens, people have to find alternatives. The other issue related to dry forests is that much of the carbohydrates that people rely on have to be imported. And so the food price scenario that we're experiencing at the moment with incredibly high food prices is affecting people's food security because they're unable to basically purchase the basic essentials that they need. So they rely more, ironically, on the forest for their particular nutritional needs and long term food security. So that's a major, major issue, and that's something we're also looking into. I think one of the major problems has been this sort of national approach. And because dry forests cover probably 31, 32 countries in Africa, we need a much more holistic understanding of the production systems of dry forests and how they adapt to climate change. What's the adaptation potential? But during some lessons learned from a regional and continent wide perspective, it doesn't mean sort of a reductionist approach. It means just understanding what are the big issues, essentially, that can make a difference to these 31 countries that have dry forests in. I think, essentially, one of the things we want to influence is a wider sort of Africa wide dry forest strategy that looks at issues of adaptation, mitigation, food security, sustainable forest management, and have a research and development policy that is much more holistic in its approach, but also implementation. I think, essentially, that the major stumbling block with red is that the majority of research has been done in the humid forests. And so getting the baseline biomass figures, the carbon storage figures is going to be a challenge, and that needs to happen fairly soon. The major problem is that in dry forests, much of the biomass and carbon is stored underground. And so developing techniques to evaluate below ground biomass need to be developed, and they're somewhat challenging. It's much easier to measure a tree and determine its height, and then you can work out the biomass. And there are some very rudimentary ways and means of doing that. But that's the first step. And by getting dry forests on the agenda in the way that we're proposing, then we can bring in the red issue and try and promote red as a potential land use alternative. We're bringing together probably 200 experts who are focused on dry forest research and development. And we want to reappraise what we've been doing in dry forests and look at the research directions that we should be going in, review our geographical priorities. I think that's crucial. But also to come away with a sense of collective action, if you like. So we're inviting big institutions to partner us in this event to draft a dry forest strategy that will all implement. At the moment, everyone's got their piecemeal activities going on, but it's much more an approach to bring together in a holistic fashion our expertise and intentions for future research.