What is "sustainable harvesting"? Planting more than chopping down?
It goes beyond that. A forest is not only a collection of trees. To have a forest you also need an undergrowth (I think it's called that way). That's why we have less forest but more trees in some places in Europe.
We need urgently to stop cutting virgin forests. There are not many left and it'll take centuries, maybes millennia to have them back.
This process can be sped up via intelligent afforestation (Miyawaki, permaculture etc).
Heavy mulching combined with densely planted native plants of different heights (everything from understory to canopy layer) effectively traps enough moisture and introduces a wide enough variety of microbes to sufficiently kick start a positive spiral mimicking virgin forests.
This requires manual input of water and mulching for the first two years or so. After that point you have a self sufficient, dense forest that rivals natural ones.
Combined with water harvesting (swales, check dams, man made ponds) this has been proven very effective in dry parts India, China, Northern Africa and Australia.
It goes beyond that. A forest is not only a collection of trees. To have a forest you also need an undergrowth (I think it's called that way). That's why we have less forest but more trees in some places in Europe.
We need urgently to stop cutting virgin forests. There are not many left and it'll take centuries, maybes millennia to have them back.