Forests sustainability is a challenging task in a complex socioeconomic context. North Lebanon is a critical zone harboring forests of key ecological value and is one of the most deprived regions in Lebanon with high poverty rates, where forests are heavily impacted by unsustainable anthropogenic practices. In the global frame of climate change scenarios, this paper tests a multistakeholder, multidisciplinary approach for forest management, combining a joint participatory methodology with stakeholders along with field ecological surveys in the upper Akkar watershed (north Lebanon). A set of participatory tools including stakeholder’s analysis, problem tree, objective tree, and scenario building are tailored to reach this goal. Results exhibit that forest management is not only related to forests per se but also very much linked to the surrounding socioeconomic situation. Involving not only strict silviculture interventions but also a definite consideration of community needs and local economy, the adoption of a multitool, multidisciplinary, multistakeholder approach combines all possible aspects of a challenging context and unfolds complementary processes which all feed back into one target. Yet, it is a time-consuming process, which can easily drown financial and temporal resources and which can sometimes raise unrealistic expectations that are difficult to meet. 1. Introduction Forests are essential for human survival and well-being. They harbor two-thirds of all terrestrial animal and plant species and provide food, oxygen, shelter, recreation, and spiritual sustenance, as well as over five thousand commercially traded products, ranging from pharmaceuticals to timber and clothing [1]. Mediterranean forests in particular harbor a distinctive mix of stands offering various types of vital resources and services to the societies and economies bordering the Mediterranean basin [2]. However, the unsustainable and abusive use of forest resources as well as the changes in land use patterns in northern and southern Mediterranean has led to the depletion of their assets and will predictably contribute to a pronounced fragmentation in the 20 coming years [3]. The plodding effects of climate change will mainly exacerbate the consequences [4], especially that scientific evidence is further demonstrating that the climate is indeed changing [4, 5], even if the range of changes and the global distribution of the impacts are less apparent [6]. In this evolving natural and socioeconomic context, sustainable, integrated, and participatory forest management is
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