 We're here today with the Director General of the Center for International Forestry Research, C4. Dr. Robert Nasig, good morning, Robert. Good morning. How are you? Today we're marking the special location of the International Day of Forests. What is the state of the world's forests? Well, instead of, I would say, not as good as we would like to have it. If you look at the various types of forests and using a pretty rough classification, the Boreal Forest has had some problems because of climate change, because of infestation of pests, a large amount of fire, drought, and it is the largest forest on earth. I mean, it's even bigger than the tropical forest. So the situation is a bit complicated there, and with the climate change and the melting of the permafrost, it can be even worse. The Temperate Forest is the one that has been increased in size during the last five years, based on the various reports, but the increase is mainly linked to plantation and something. But in a sense, the Temperate Forest is probably the one that is faring the best for the time being, except that we do have some pest problems like the emerald ash borer that is just wiping out entire species in Europe. Boreal Forest, which is the main remit of C4, there has been a lot of emphasis on wet or humid forests, what they call high forests, where we have had some reduction of deforestation in Brazil. We have had some efforts done on this forest, and although deforestation is still too high, it has reduced in this tropical moist forest. We still have a lot of problems linked to degradation, and I think that 2017 was the first year or there was more emission linked to degradation than to deforestation. So that's important. Another aspect of the tropical forest is the dry forest, and that we really have a problem because it's an area where you have most of the population in the tropics that is the most degraded and the most in danger, and where deforestation doesn't stop. So in a sense, deforestation in the Amazon has been reduced, but deforestation in the dry area of Cerrado has not been reduced, it has even increased. The dry land, the dry forests are generally more threatened and overlooked in the international dialogue compared to wet forests. So if you have to summarize, I mean, the situation of forest in the world is not as good as it should be, even the importance of forest. And this year's theme is forests and sustainable cities. Could you tell us a bit more about what research you see for doing in this area? We have, although we don't work in cities, so we don't work really on urban forestry, and there's been quite an interesting series of work in the couple of years in 2016 that show the importance of trees in terms of mitigating climate, protecting wind links. What C4 is doing in terms of cities or urbanism and forestry is really looking at the link between the fact that we are moving towards a urban world, more than 60% of the population is living in cities, but also the fact that these cities are creating a big call for resources coming from outside. And that's important, that's the thing that we need to keep understanding is the link between the cities and the natural outside. And it's something that appears in different ways in terms of our migration from the forest area or from the particular into cities changing what is happening in the forest. Now the increasing size of cities is in fact heating or deforesting very fertile or some of the very good forest land. And as C4 we are working on this issue of the impact of urbanization in terms of what is happening in the forest and at the same time the impact of migration towards a generally urban center in terms of what is happening to the people that are left and are migrating in the forest. In 2018, C4 is celebrating its 25th anniversary and in this time it has developed a strong reputation as the leading research institution for tropical forests. Could you tell us in what way has C4 advanced the agenda for the world forest? This year in 2018, C4 is 25 years old. And I think the main contribution of C4 to forestry and to forest has been really looking beyond the forest and having a lot of the players and the stakeholder understanding that many problems that are affecting forests happen because of things that are situated outside of the forest and outside of the classic forestry sector. While this work that we have been doing beyond the classical forestry sector like forest management, reduce impact logging, civic culture, that set a C4 aside compared to other research organizations and that I think has been the major achievement of the work that or the impact that we could have had during the last 25 years. Although we did some work on the classical forestry, this is not where we have had the most impact. We have had the most impact in terms of expanding the notion of forestry and showing how forestry in fact contributes to sustainable development and a lot of the things that are happening in forestry are linked to decisions that are taken outside of the forestry sector. And looking ahead, what are C4's research priorities coming up? This is trying to achieve this recognition of the role of forest for society and as a role and not only as a producing timber but also as producing timber. This is to understand what is happening because of a very important factor outside of the forestry sector like demography, migration in terms of forest. This is to understand the role of forest in mitigating and adapting to climate change but also the impact of climate change we have on forests. So that's mainly what we are going to do and because of the international agenda there is a lot about degradation, about restoration. This is also something on which we will invest significant effort and especially into moving from commitments into action. There is a lot of commitment, a commitment to restore such amount of forest. There is a commitment to give back such amount of forest to local people. There is a lot of commitments but we need to go beyond the commitments and into action and what C4 can do is to provide the evidence and the scientific backstopping to move from commitment to action. And in moving from commitment to action, finance is one of the key pieces missing sometimes from forest landscape restoration. In which ways can the private sector step up to these commitments and to this action? The issue of financing for forest has been sort of a recurring one and a bit of a vexing one for as long as C4 has existed and even before and it's not simply linked to the restoration issue. In terms of the specific question about restoration it is clear that all the commitments we have in terms of restoration given all these commitments there is not enough public money to achieve these commitments. So we'll have to bring the private sector investing in restoration and to have the private sector investing of restoration we need to have a clear understanding and a clear consideration of the economics of restoration. So in a sense it's not simply restoring forests so that they look like they were before being degraded because it is sometimes possible it is sometimes not possible but in fact it's more looking at restoration as something that generates economic value for the forest that have been restored and that this economic value can interest an investor and at the same time can convince the people or the reason for which the forest has been deforested in first intense not to be degraded again. So that's the issue of we will be able to attract the private sector only if we show the private sector that the investment makes sense otherwise it's going to be grand from public money and there is not enough public money. So it's really trying to show and to understand what are the economic factors that we have to consider in terms of restoration and how to bring an economic value of the forest that has been restored for many cases. There will be some forest that are restored only for protection but I don't think that will be the majority of the forest that will be restored. A lot of the forest that has to be restored or the land that has to be restored has to be restored for economic activities so that we don't go again into primary forest and degrade the primary forest. So in other words taking a more comprehensive approach to the way we look at forests and in that sense C4 has been a pioneer as well in linking forest to the global development agenda and as well to the landscape approach and one of the key components of one of the key projects for C4 is the Global Landscapes Forum so could you tell us a bit more about it? The Global Landscapes Forum is more than a project I would say it's really an aspiration to create a platform where all the stakeholders interested in forest and forest issues can come and present their issues, discuss their issues and look for solutions. So that's really what makes the nature of the Global Landscapes Forum unique is that it is not only forest-related, we also consider other types of land use, it's not only for the research organization, it's not only for the public donor, it's not only for the private, it's a platform that is trying to bring everybody on the table and to create a movement so that our natural resources are better managed and more sustainably managed for both the livelihood of the people that are living there but also for the biodiversity and for the ecosystem services for all the natural value. So that's really what makes the Global Landscapes Forum different. Now there are more thematic initiatives, it's this idea that okay we are going to create a movement, we are going to create a community of people that are interested in sustainably managing the place where they are living, what we call a landscape. Okay thank you very much for that. Thank you Roderigo.