Climate-smart forestry: Strategies, policies, and technologies for enhancing climate change mitigation and ecosystem sustainability

Climate-smart forestry (CSF) has emerged as a vital strategy for mitigating the impacts of climate change while enhancing the resilience of forest ecosystems. The CSF integrates ecological, economic, and social objectives into forest management practices against increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, extreme weather events, and the escalating vulnerability of forests to climate change. Forest ecosystems, critical for carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation, are increasingly vulnerable to climate change, underscoring the urgent need to develop CSF as an adaptive, integrated management approach for sustainable ecosystem management. This review provides an updated definition of CSF and synthesizes key strategies within CSF, including afforestation and reforestation, sustainable logging and wood product utilization, and disturbance management. We highlight the challenges of implementing CSF, including divergent definitions among stakeholders, trade-offs between carbon sequestration and financial viability, and gaps in policies and in the adoption of technologies. We also highlight the importance of using monitoring tools, advanced technologies, and community engagement to effectively implement CSF. Furthermore, we identify critical knowledge gaps in assessing the long-term impacts of CSF on ecosystem biodiversity, community welfare, and climate resilience, and urge future research to address these gaps. Ultimately, this review advocates for comprehensive, region-specific policies that align CSF objectives with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, promoting their broad-scale adoption to tackle climate change through effective forest management. • Climate-smart forestry (CSF) integrates ecological, economic, and social objectives to enhance ecosystem resilience. • Core strategies of CSF include afforestation, sustainable logging, and adaptive disturbance management. • Major challenges for implementing CSF: divergent definitions, policy gaps, and carbon-finance trade-offs. • Scaling CSF requires integrating advanced remote sensing tools with cross-sectoral policy incentives.