Conserving forest biological diversity: How the Montreal Process helps achieve sustainability

Forests support a variety of ecosystems, species and genes — collectively referred to as biological diversity — along with important processes that tie these all together. With the growing recognition that biological diversity contributes to human welfare in a number of important ways such as providing food, medicine and fiber (provisioning services); controlling insect pests or water flows (regulating services); furnishing recreation or spiritual fulfillment (cultural services); and providing soil and nutrients for plant growth (supporting services) (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005), societies worldwide are starting to understand that these services depend directly upon the condition of their ecosystems and cannot be taken for granted.