Trees for Rural Economies: The United Nations, Türkiye, and Robinia – With İsmail Belen and Márton Németh

Global perspectives on forest-driven economies. It’s easy to confine ourselves and our thinking to our own countries, states, and bioregions. But we all live on one planet, and the integrity of our rural economies and our ecosystems reaches beyond the borders of our nation states. Today we’re joined by İsmail Belen and Marton Németh. İsmail is from the country of Türkiye (Turkey), and he is the Chair of the United Nations Forum on Forests and the Inspector General of The Turkish Forest Service. Márton Németh leads Silvanus Forestry, from the country of Hungary. Silvanus specializes in improved tree genetics for industrial roundwood, namely shipmast black locust.Here we dive into forests in Turkey, and how trees create rural livelihoods and increase ecosystem function in a mediterranean climate that’s been farmed for a very long time.What role do non-native pioneer trees play?When does honey production from forests create more value than wood?How does black locust reduce erosion and improve marginal soils?How does Turkey steward $4b toward forestry?Monoculture forestry vs. multi-species multi-yield plantations?Chestnuts as non timber forest products?We’re going to talk about it all in plain English, even though we speak a combined seven languages.There’s a lot of good info in this episode.