Forests play an important role in addressing climate change as carbon dioxide sinks. On the contrary, deforestation not only contributes to the reduction of carbon dioxide sinks, but also to additional greenhouse gas emissions. Forests offer a number of other crucial functions vital for the conservation of the Earth’s ecosystem from regulating water regimes, preventing soil erosion to offering the habitats for numerous animal and plant species. For this reason, forest conservation and sustainable management is in the common interest of the international community. Customary law principle of preventing harm (no harm principle) requires from states to ensure that deforestation and their forest management does not cause serious harm in the environment of other states. However, considering the climate change preventive function of forests, it is extremely difficult to determine when deforestation results in serious harm in the environment of other states. These difficulties call for drafting of an international convention, that would address sustainable forest management. The overview of international documents, European regulation and some noteworthy national law documents in the field of forest protection, illustrate a lack of binding international law rules of forest management. Based on the analysis of the international legal protection of natural resources, conservation of which has already been recognized as a common concern of humankind, the dissertation presents three common elements of this concept and confirms the hypothesis that the protection of forests is also a common concern of humankind. This recognition facilitates forest management on the international level, as the concept of common concern of humankind calls for the respect of five principles and their corresponding obligations: no harm principle, principle of sustainable development and management, principle of international cooperation, principle of intergenerational cooperation and principle of multi-stakeholder cooperation. The dissertation concludes with a proposal for a framework convention on the principles for protection, conservation and sustainable management of forests, which would define how the above principles apply specifically to forests.
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