Forest Futures: Will the Forest Save Us All? | Opening Keynote, Response and Gallery Preview

Planetary survival in the Anthropocene crucially depends on the stewardship of resilient forest ecosystems worldwide-at the scales of wilderness, planted forests, metropolitan tracts, and the urban forest canopy of cities and towns everywhere. The Fifth National Climate Assessment (US, 2023) repeats now familiar claims that healthy forests provide essential ecological, economic, and social benefits and services.
But our forests today face extreme risk. Disturbance agents are driving massive change-including unprecedented temperature increases, altered precipitation patterns, increasingly catastrophic weather events, uncontrollable mega-fires, and destructive land use practices. This symposium addresses risks and threats, initiatives and improved practices, and speculations on a more secure and more just future for metropolitan and urban forests and the species that inhabit them.
The symposium accompanies a concurrent gallery exhibition in the Druker Design Gallery, Gund Hall, entitled Forest Futures, curated by GSD Professor of Landscape Architecture Anita Berrizbeitia and the graduate students in her seminar, DES-3510 Forests: Histories and Future Narratives.
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Opening Keynote by Ned Friedman with responses from Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, Gary Hilderbrand, and Ed Eigen. Gallery preview presentation by Anita Berrizbeitia.
0:00 Welcome by Gary Hilderbrand
09:01 Keynote by Ned Friedman
34:57 Respondent Introduction by Gary Hilderbrand
37:54 Response by Mayor Michelle Wu
52:09 Response by Ed Eigen
01:01:36 Respondent Discussion
01:14:30 Gallery Preview Introduction by Gary Hilderbrand
01:18:04 Gallery Preview by Anita Berrizbeitia