Urban forests are essential for climate resilience, biodiversity, and public health

This work should be interpreted as a synthesis and position paper rather than an original scientific article, as its objective is not to present new findings. Its main strength lies in bringing together a broad international group of specialists and rigorously synthesizing existing scientific knowledge on the role of urban forests in climate resilience, biodiversity, public health, and social equity. The article explicitly addresses key aspects of urban tree planning and management, such as multilevel governance, financing, continuous monitoring, adaptive management, legal protection, and the need to ensure equitable access to green infrastructure.

In the current context, marked by increasingly frequent, intense, and early heat waves, the role of urban trees in creating climate refuges could perhaps have been emphasized even more. The planning and spatial distribution of green infrastructure should be strongly guided by this objective, prioritizing those urban areas most exposed to and vulnerable to extreme heat.

Furthermore, although the paper includes numerous recommendations of great interest, many of them remain at the conceptual level. To facilitate their effective implementation, it is essential to move toward the development of quantitative indicators that allow for the measurement and monitoring of both the benefits and costs associated with urban forests. Having robust metrics is essential not only to support adaptive planning processes but also to justify investments and clearly communicate the value of this infrastructure to policymakers and urban managers.