| United Nations | E/CN.17/IPF/1996/6 |
Economic and Social Council
Distr. GENERAL
20 February 1996
ORIGINAL: ENGLISH
COMMISSION ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Ad Hoc Intergovernmental Panel
on Forests
Second session
11-22 March 1996
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH, FOREST ASSESSMENT AND DEVELOPMENT OF
CRITERIA AND INDICATORS FOR SUSTAINABLE FOREST MANAGEMENT
Programme element III.1 (a): Assessment of the multiple
benefits of all types of forests
Report of the Secretary-General
SUMMARY
The present report relates to category III, Scientific research, forest
assessment and development of criteria and indicators for sustainable forest
management, of the work programme of the Ad Hoc Intergovernmental Panel on
Forests (IPF). As requested by IPF at its first session, the report addresses
programme element III.1 (a), on assessments of the multiple benefits of all
types of forests.
One of the fundamental questions raised concerns the uses and ways to
expand the Forest Resources Assessment (FRA) of the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations. It is seen as necessary to distinguish
between users and user needs at the national and international levels. The
two levels have common characteristics, but each also has its specific
requirements and consequently a specific approach to data collection and
reporting. While reliable country data are a major input to global
assessments, the conclusions of the global assessment, providing country-by-
country information, are only of limited use for planning at the national
level.
National forest inventories are essential for the preparation and
implementation of national forestry action plans and/or programmes. The
information needed is specific to each forest site and its current condition
and to each enterprise and its production goals. It includes data on factors
not related to wood production. Besides data collected from forest
inventories, long-term experimental observations on the response of forests to
various treatments are important. They serve as inputs to model studies for
simulating the development of forests under alternative forest management
options.
At present the FAO FRA provides global coverage and produces results by
country and subnational unit. Only data on country and higher levels are
published. More detailed, geo-referenced information is available for
scientific purposes.
The results of an inquiry conducted by FAO/ECE in the context of future
global assessments shows that most of the developed countries have the
capacity to collect, analyse and use data related to traditional forest
management oriented towards wood production. Monitoring of change, however,
is very uneven from country to country. In the developing countries the
existing institutional capacity is either inadequate or too weak to collect
and update basic information related to forest coverage and types of forests,
species composition, existing growing stock and volume of harvest. A table is
provided summarizing the situation at the end of 1990. Although only a few
countries are collecting information on the environmental functions of forests
and their non-wood benefits, those benefits are well recognized in many
countries, and recognition is growing.
The report urges that high priority be given to capacity-building with a
focus on the development of national strategies for the management of forests.
The work carried out in the forest resources assessment of 1990 should
continue in two areas: data collection based on existing reliable country
information; and sampling of high resolution satellite date; environmental
parameters, including biological diversity, soil and water conservation and
vegetation degradation; cooperation with other organizations in order to join
resources and share results; and efforts to harmonize concepts, terminology,
definitions and classifications.
CONTENTS
Paragraphs Page
INTRODUCTION ...............................................1 - 5 4
I.USES AND USERS OF INFORMATION ON FOREST RESOURCES .... 6 - 11 4
A. National level ................................... 7 - 10 5
B. Global level ..................................... 11 6
II.OVERVIEW ............................................. 12 - 15 7
III.EXISTING GAPS IN AVAILABLE KNOWLEDGE AND INFORMATION . 16 - 21 7
IV.APPROACHES TO THE ISSUE AND LESSONS LEARNED .......... 22 - 43 9
A. Experiences ...................................... 23 - 36 9
B. Support to developing countries .................. 37 - 39 12
C. Lessons learned at the international level ....... 40 - 43 13
V.FUTURE TRENDS AND PRIORITIES ......................... 44 - 46 14
VI.ISSUES FOR FURTHER CONSIDERATION ..................... 47 15
INTRODUCTION
1.The Commission on Sustainable Development at its third session
established the Ad Hoc Intergovernmental Panel on Forests and outlined its
programme of work, which contained five major categories of issues. Under
category III, Scientific research, forest assessment and development of
criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management, the Panel would
"review existing periodic assessments of forests, including relevant socio-
economic and environmental factors, at the global level; identify shortfalls
in present assessments relative to policy considerations; and recommend
practical ways of improving such assessments. Examine ways to broaden the
scientific knowledge and the statistical database available in order to better
understand the ecological, economic, cultural and social functions performed
by all types of forests. Promote the further development of methodologies for
properly valuing the multiple benefits derived from forests in the form of
goods and services, and subsequently to consider their inclusion within the
systems of national accounting, drawing upon work that has been already
undertaken by the United Nations and other relevant organizations". 1/
2.At its first session, the Intergovernmental Panel decided that, in
consideration of category III, programme element III.1 would entail the
preparation of two reports, one of them identifying ways to expand the Forest
Resources Assessment (FRA) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations (FAO) "with regard to the qualitative and quantitative
assessment of all types of forests, including information on biological
resources and non-wood forest products and services; information on
environmental and social benefits; standardization of tropical and non-
tropical data; collection of broader types of forest statistics; coordination
of forest monitoring with remote sensing and geographical information systems;
the continuous nature of the assessment; and accessibility of information
generated to all interested parties". 2/
3.The present report, prepared by FAO, as lead agency for programme
element III.1 in consultation with the secretariat of the Panel in the
Division for Sustainable Development of the Department for Policy Coordination
and Sustainable Development of the United Nations Secretariat, is in response
to that decision.
4.In outlining the subject, specific reference is made to the forest
resources assessments of FAO and of the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE).
However, significant contributions to national and supranational information
on forests have been made by numerous other actors. Reference to the work of
cooperating organizations is made without attempting, to provide a
comprehensive overview of their activities.
I. USES AND USERS OF INFORMATION ON FOREST RESOURCES
5.One of the fundamental questions concerning an expanded FRA is that of
the uses and users of the information expected. Assuming that funding for
forest resources assessment and monitoring at all levels will remain scarce,
strict prioritization will be necessary. This further underlines the need for
prior analysis.
6.There is need to distinguish between the various types of users and user
needs at the national and international levels. The two levels have common
characteristics, but each also has its specific requirements which dictate a
specific approach to data collection and reporting. While reliable country
data are a major input to global assessments, the conclusions of global
assessments -providing country-by-country information - are only of limited
use for planning at the national level.
A. National level
7.The main users of assessment results are national/subnational land use
and forestry policy makers and planners, forest managers in the public and
private sector and local communities. Their information needs vary according
to planning situations, broadly classified as follows:
(a) Strategic forestry planning concerned with issues of general
relevance to forestry planning at the national or provincial level and to the
sustainable management of forests, taking into account linkages with other
sectors. The most demanding information needs in this context may be
formulated as follows: What is the level of present and potential production
(in a broad sense, including both goods and services) in forests and related
lands, compared to the needs? How is it expected to change under alternative
forest management programmes and socio-economic regimes? A subsidiary
question related to the monitoring of the forests is: What is the effect of
implemented policies on forest ecosystems, and in particular, on their
productive and renewal capacity?
Since strategic forestry planning has to deal with intra-sectoral issues
as well as intersectoral ones such as land use, energy, employment, tribal
matters, education, social welfare and environment, the scope of the needed
information is wide and includes variables linked with both the production and
the consumption (needs) of goods and services derived from forests such as
land cover and land use; economic information on forests such as volume,
increment and drain; areas suitable for afforestation; species diversity;
endangered species; ecological values; traditional/indigenous land-use values;
biomass; demographic and socio-economic data affecting forest resources; and
need of land for alternate uses such as agriculture and urbanization;
(b) Forest management planning oriented towards local activity. The
typical issue is choice of place and time for interventions. The survey
intensity is rather high, and mapping - more generally, large-scale
geo-referenced information - is essential.
8.The information needed for forest management is specific to each forest
site and its current condition and to each enterprise and its production
goals. It includes data on various factors not related to wood production.
Besides data collected from forest inventories, long-term experimental
observations on the response of forests to various treatments are important.
They serve as inputs to model studies for simulating the development of
forests under alternative forest management options.
9.In both developed and developing countries, changes in information needs
relate mostly to the multifunctional role of forests in general and their
environmental functions in particular. The environmental information also has
global implications. Continuous research on forest inventory and monitoring
techniques is needed in order to expand the scope of forest assessments to
cover, in a cost-effective manner, the demand for new information.
10.A wide range of information is now needed for the preparation and
implementation of national forestry action plans and/or programmes. National
forest inventories constitute a basic tool and contribute to the formulation
of effective national strategies for the forestry sector. The term
"effective" is important, for it conveys the idea that a sound database is an
essential requirement for relating investment to return, production to
consumption, and conservation to development, and for ensuring that forest
management achieves the goal of sustainability in the widest sense.
B. Global level
11.At the global level the main users of information are:
(a) Planners and policy makers in forestry and related development
issues at the global, regional and national levels, including national
Governments and intergovernmental organizations;
(b) Public investors like the World Bank, the Investment Centre of FAO,
and regional banks. This is a group of international actors who work with
countries within the framework of national strategies. They need complete
sector-wise data and analyses;
(c) The national and international scientific community, including
universities and research institutes. Two types of information needs can be
identified: the first related to the question of to what extent forests and
related resources can meet sustainably current and future needs of people for
goods and services derived from the forest; and the second, to long-term
dynamic processes such as deforestation and forest degradation, the impact
they have on climate change and biodiversity, and the driving forces behind
them. This group will request well-documented information and relatively raw
(unprocessed) data;
(d) Certain non-governmental organizations are active as pressure groups
or disseminators of information and are therefore important users of forest
resources information. To avoid alarmist or misleading awareness campaigns,
they need reliable and representative information - e.g., on various forest
types (boreal, temperate, tropical, wet, dry, natural, plantations,
monocultures);
(e) The general public and media. The need here is to raise awareness
and provide objective information on the state of and change in forest and
related resources. This group generally requests "digested" information on
the main trends and developments. It requires presentations that are free of
jargon and easily understood.
II. OVERVIEW
12.At present FAO's forest resources assessment (FRA) provides global
coverage and produces results by country and subnational unit. Only data at
the country and higher levels are published. More detailed information, and
geo-referenced information, is available for scientific purposes and has
potentially high value for such use. A rich potential lies also in
intensified use of the data produced, in the use of such data in combination
with other data sets, in the furtherance of studies initiated with those data
(e.g., fragmentation of the forest cover, loss of biological diversity,
changes in biomass), and in improving the reliability of future collections of
the type of data collected so far.
13.The methods used in the latest FRA, including the institutional memory
and the information networks created around it, could be refined and enlarged
for the generation of additional information. That development should,
however, be guided by the following principles:
(a) Scientific soundness (e.g., a solid conceptual base, measurability)
is a basic requirement for acceptance and credibility;
(b) Usefulness: information for which a clear need has been identified;
(c) Cost-effectiveness.
14.Forest resources information - like the forests themselves - has
economic, social, environmental and cultural significance, and spans various
sectors of the economy. This implies that inventories - from the local to the
global - need to be planned, executed and reported on in a dialogue with
stakeholders in all fields concerned.
15.That forest resources information has far-reaching significance can be
illustrated with the forest cover change matrices produced by FRA in 1990. By
showing the shift of land from one category to another, the matrices help to
explain the driving forces behind phenomena such as deforestation and changes
in the density and quality of vegetation. At each level, from local to
global, such information is valuable for the preparation of measures to
counteract undesirable change.
III. EXISTING GAPS IN AVAILABLE KNOWLEDGE AND INFORMATION
16.Programme area D, of chapter 11 of Agenda 21, identifies existing gaps
as follows: "Assessment and systematic observations are essential components
of long-term planning, for evaluating effects, quantitatively and
qualitatively, and for rectifying inadequacies. This mechanism, however, is
one of the often neglected aspects of forest resources, management,
conservation and development. In many cases, even the basic information
related to the area and type of forests, existing potential and volume of
harvest is lacking. In many developing countries, there is a lack of
structures and mechanisms to carry out these functions." 3/
17.At the national level a number of key questions with considerable
significance for strategic decisions cannot be answered at all, or only
partially, or only in some countries. They concern such issues as the
consequences of resource management alternatives. Answers would require
knowledge of the current state of forests, their capacities to fulfil their
functions and their responses to interventions of a policy nature. Such
interventions can be information campaigns and/or the development of
guidelines, legislation, taxation and subsidies.
18.Two knowledge gaps deserve specific mention:
(a) Direct forest dependency by people, particularly in developing
countries, and the dynamics of that dependency;
(b) Availability and the consumption of need for non-wood goods and
services derived from forests, and their dynamics.
To avoid exaggerated expectations, it must be kept in mind that it is
not always lack of information that is the bottleneck factor for improving
forest management. Many countries do not have the institutional capacity to
design - let alone to implement - strategies for the management of their
forest resources. In those cases information alone does not help.
Institutional support must be given equal or higher priority.
20.What is not known (but needs to be known) at the international level is
more difficult to identify. The uses and users of information need to be more
precisely defined. What planning situations exist and where? What are the
designs and formulations of development strategies? What type of research
needs more and better information to explain the mechanisms and driving forces
behind success and failures in resource management? The results produced and
experience gained over the years in FAO's forest resources assessment
activities will almost certainly need to be complemented, in view of the
increasing demands for comprehensive information on forest resources at the
national, international and global levels.
21.Supranational issues are those that call for the development of
supranational or even global strategies and action programmes in which forest
resources information is required for their formulation and implementation.
Some of them, along with the gaps in current knowledge, are:
(a) The status of and change in the sustainable wood production capacity
of the world's forests, including industrial wood and fuelwood. The global
overview of a potential is missing, as is knowledge about actual harvests and
needs, to be compared to that potential;
(b) The carbon cycle, which relates to the assessment of biomass.
Global estimates were made in 1990 by FRA. However, they must be considered
indicative only for certain countries, since the basis of field measurements
is very small. Although measurements of this type are generally costly, good
estimates may be all that is needed;
(c) Deforestation and land (vegetation) degradation. Knowledge gaps
exist in the understanding of processes and their driving forces and in early
warning about the geographical or structural "location" of new deforestation
or degradation;
(d) Biological diversity. Limiting factors include unclear concepts
and, partly as a consequence, uncertainty about what should be measured and
how;
(e) Forest health in the context of transboundary pollution. Basic
knowledge is missing as to how to measure health (e.g., the problem of
distinguishing symptoms of age or normal climate stress from symptoms of air
pollution), since knowledge about cause/effect mechanisms is incomplete.
IV. APPROACHES TO THE ISSUE AND LESSONS LEARNED
22.In order to establish a realistic level of expectations, a distinction
must be made between assessment on the one hand, and analysis and use of
assessed data, on the other. The two should work closely together, yet they
are fundamentally different. Assessment implies (repeated) observations
according to defined criteria. Analysis and use of data will try to detect
correlations, to find explanations, to valuate (e.g., decide what is good or
bad) and draw conclusions as to required action. Thus one should not expect
analytical work and extraction of consequences. Moreover, it must be
recognized that different levels of precision in data-gathering are required.
Although at the local level, a management unit needs considerable details and
accurate data, regional and global-level policy makers are more concerned with
intermediate and macro-level trends and estimates. New issues regarding
forest resources develop continuously. Before assessments can make useful
contributions for dealing with such new issues, a number of steps are
required, in which various actors are involved and which take considerable
time.
A. Experiences
1. National level
23.The multiple benefits of forests and other wooded lands - including
urban and peri-urban forests - are well recognized in many countries, and the
recognition is growing. However, that recognition does not necessarily lead
to a formal assessment of forest resources and/or services. Many countries
have focused instead on developing guidelines and management recommendations
for different forest ecosystems, based only on already existing quantitative
and qualitative knowledge.
24.An inquiry conducted by FAO/ECE on future global assessments shows that
most of the developed countries have the capacity to collect, analyse and use
data related to traditional forest management oriented towards wood
production. Concerning the monitoring of change, however, the achievements so
far have been very uneven. A long tradition exists in practically all
developed countries for the conduct of forest inventories for local management
planning. Concerning national or provincial forest inventories, the situation
also varies, from a long tradition and well targeted and state-of-the-art
inventories to very insufficient information. With regard to the
environmental functions of forests and their non-wood benefits, only a few
countries are currently collecting information, and new efforts have to be
made to do so on a large scale.
25.A forest inventory report prepared by FAO shows that in most developing
countries the existing institutional capacity is either inadequate or too weak
to collect and update basic information on the area and type of forests,
species composition, existing growing stock and volume of harvest. The table
below summarizes the present situation.
26.Most of the past and ongoing inventory/assessment activities in
developing countries have depended on external funding and external expertise.
Only a few countries have natural resource inventory institutions with trained
personnel and the equipment needed. There is considerable variation among
regions with respect to the completeness and quality of the information.
There is also considerable variation in the timeliness of the information.
The data are about 10 years old, on average, and may therefore not be really
representative of the most recent years. Developing countries have not used
the most appropriate techniques, such as continuous forest inventory designs,
for change assessment, and only a few have reliable estimates of actual
plantations, harvest and utilization, although such estimates are essential
for national forestry planning and policy-making. No developing country has
carried out a national forest inventory containing information that can be
used to generate reliable estimates of the total woody biomass volume and
change. Finally links with planning and decision-making are generally weak or
non-existent; information is produced in isolation from its application. This
implies that existing information is poorly used, and insufficient feed-back
from users reaches the producers of information.
27.Developing countries have difficulty sustaining the acquired expertise
and capacity, for many reasons, including inadequate funding and frequent
turnover of staff. The establishment and development of proper national
institutions is a basic requirement for action towards sustainable forest
resources development.
28.There is now growing recognition in developing countries of the multiple
benefits of forests and other associated resources. Many forest inventories
have the more or less explicit objective of responding to questions related to
those multiple benefits. This has led to increased scope of FRA activities,
including attention to monitoring deforestation and change in vegetative
cover. There are now also cases of forest inventories that assess quantities
of edible fruits, and there are numerous studies of biological diversity for
different purposes and using different approaches. Biomass assessment is
often an extrapolation of traditional volume assessment.
Table. State of forest inventory in the tropics, 1990
-----------------------------------------------
Region Number of countries
under assessment
-----------------------------------------------
Africa 40
Asia and
the Pacific 17
Latin America
and the Caribbean 33
---------------------
Total 90
-----------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Number of countries with forest resources data at national level
Forest area information
(number of assessments and reference years)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No assessment One assessment More than one
before 1981 1981-90 assessment
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Africa 3 23 12 2
Asia and 0 1 6 10
the Pacific
Latin America 0 15 9 9
and the Caribbean
-----------------------------------------------------------
Total 3 39 27 21
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Other topics covered
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Forest Forest
conservation harvesting
and Forest Volume and and
management plantations biomass utilization
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Africa 4 8 2 4
Asia and 10 8 7 7
the Pacific
Latin America 11 8 9 4
and the Caribbean
-------------------------------------------------------------
Total 25 24 18 15
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. International level
29. An assessment of global forest resources is carried out periodically by
FAO and ECE, with other national and international organizations contributing
to data collection, research and studies either in specific geographical or
ecological regions or on specific topics. A database is being prepared by the
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) describing actors and their
activities in the field of assessment of land use/land cover.
30. Many national and international organizations have devoted particular
attention to problems of the rainforest and to producing vegetation maps,
based on remote-sensing. There are prospects to enhance the usefulness of
such activities by making the results of different activities complementary
and compatible so that a comprehensive picture can be assembled. An
initiative in this direction has been taken by the International Union of
Forest Research Organizations.
31. A number of organizations are cooperating with FAO: the Joint Research
Centre of the European Commission, on combining low- and high-resolution
satellite data; the World Conservation Monitoring Centre, on protected areas;
the EROS Data Centre of the United States Geological Survey and NASA Landsat
Pathfinder, on providing and screening satellite imagery; the United States
Forest Service and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, on
technical and statistical methodology; the European Commission, on a
comparative study of European forest inventories.
32. However, the potential of coordinating activities and of sharing results
is far from being fully met. There are gaps in state and change assessments
based on satellite remote-sensing in dry areas with pronounced seasonal
variations and in cloud-covered areas. In the developed countries, conclusive
forest cover change information is incomplete.
33. The FAO forest resources assessment covering developed countries was
able to draw from a relatively rich base of information produced by countries
for their own needs. Nevertheless, some important weaknesses do exist: the
widely varying quality of country-level data, use of different standards, and
lack of secretariat resources to analyse data received and to follow up
through the network of country correspondents. As a result, the final reports
contain numerous gaps and inconsistencies. Moreover, the results by country
do not have a common reference year (which is not considered very serious,
since change processes in general are not fast), and the information collected
is not presented on maps.
34. For developing countries, both the collection and the compilation of
basic data are carried out at FAO. The focus, in the last two rounds of
assessment (1980 and 1990), has been on change detection and on world-wide
comparability. Considerable progress has been made in these fields, but
comparability between developed and developing countries still needs
improvement. FAO also makes the global synthesis. In the assessment of 1990
for developing countries the compilation of data was centralized at FAO and
conducted by using a team of experts and consultants. This was made possible
with the help of external budgetary resources in addition to FAO regular
programme contributions.
35. For the tropical developing countries, in addition to the assessment
based on an analysis of country data, a supplementary approach was used. In
the entire tropical zone, systematic observations of forest cover and
deforestation were made on a sample of multidate high resolution satellite
data. This design provides information at regional and global levels on the
process of change in the form of a change matrix which has relevance for land
use and forest policy planning and which satisfies rather well the
requirements of the scientific community in respect of objectivity,
reliability and continuity of observations. For the first time at such large
scale, it answers the question of what happens to the land that is deforested,
and it gives a new type of information regarding the process of vegetation
degradation and recovery, by showing class-to-class changes for eight land
cover classes.
36. The remote-sensing/sampling approach is also expected to supplement the
general lack of multidate information on forest cover in the developing
countries. It has been possible, through this approach, to confirm the
findings of the assessment based on an analysis of existing country
information regarding state and change of forest area.
B. Support to developing countries
37. A review of field projects in forest resources assessment, carried out
by FAO since 1980, shows that all the projects had an impact in generation
information but that only a few contributed to building long-term capacity and
none to establishing an institutional frame for effective use of forest
resources information. In those cases where a lasting impact was produced,
the key to success was continued involvement with the concerned institutions
spread over a long period of time. In all cases, a necessary condition was
governmental commitment to maintaining and developing the institution after
termination of a project.
38. Forest resources assessments make use of fast-growing technology such as
digital remote-sensing techniques, geographic information systems,
communication net-working etc. There have been quite a few shortcomings in
the transfer of technology not well adapted to the new environment. Increased
South/South cooperation could provide access to very useful information and
ensure that appropriate technology is used.
39. The most important limitation associated with the current field
programme of FAO and, presumably, other organizations lies in the fact that
technical assistance is provided on request only and does not form an integral
part of a long-term strategy for developing institutional and human resources
or generating self-reliance, as envisaged in Agenda 21. As a result, although
technical assistance has been provided to member countries for over 50 years,
the existing capacity, as discussed above is rather weak. There is need for
countries and their cooperating partners to work together and agree on general
criteria to be applied in the selection, formulation and implementation of
short-term projects within the framework of national policies, strategies and
plans. This should take into account the existing relevant international
organizations, mechanisms and commitments.
C. Lessons learned at the international level
40. For the developed countries, potential for improving the ECE/FAO
assessments lies in a better use of country correspondents and more intensive
cooperation so that the work of other actors can be used. The former will
ensure that available country information is fully used and correctly
converted into common standards. The latter can lead to progress in the
utilization of, for example, map information and in the assessment of new
parameters.
41. For the developing countries it is considered a major achievement that
the state and change of forest cover can be estimated with a level of accuracy
that allows valid conclusions at least for subregions such as West Sahelian
Africa and Insular South-east Africa. Results from the remote-sensing-based
sampling have contributed essential new information in the form of change
matrices. They have also confirmed that the methods based on existing
reliable country data are robust.
42. Substantial improvements in the results require increased country
capacity, above all for the needs of the developing countries themselves.
This must be accompanied by enhanced institutional capacity for the planning
and implementation of forest management programmes.
43. The synthesis at the global level has met with difficulties due to
differences in concepts and definitions. The definition of "forest" is not
the same in developed and in developing countries. Information on area change
in developed countries was assessed for the total of "forest and other wooded
land", while in developing countries the emphasis is on the category of
forest, changes in other wooded land being less accurately assessed. There is
wide recognition of this discrepancy, and work is under way to achieve
compatibility for the core information. It must be recognized, however, that
full comparability of categories may be meaningless, since nature is so
different in the different climate zones of the earth. The priority assigned
to assessing parameters such as species richness and "naturalness" is expected
to remain low in many developing countries in the foreseeable future.
V. FUTURE TRENDS AND PRIORITIES
44. Indications from the processes, initiatives and discussions undertaken
since the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development point to
the need to describe the quality of forest management, particularly by the
progress made towards sustainable forest management, and to give increased
attention to capacity-building with a focus on the development of national
strategies for the management of forests and the use of forest resources
information. In both cases increasing emphasis is given to aspects of the
multifunctionality of forests. Within the assessment programme of ECE and
FAO, progress has already been made in some "hot spots", but additional work
on concepts and methods is required - for example, on biomass in the global
carbon cycle, biological diversity, and forest degradation.
45. Dissemination of information is becoming an increasingly critical factor
in a world where more and more groups make themselves heard in national and
international debates on issues related to forestry.
46. It is suggested that high priority be given to the following activities
and developments:
(a) Capacity-building and long-term maintenance, with a focus on the
development of national strategies for the management of forests;
(b) Continuation of the work carried out in the forest resources
assessment of 1990, with two components: data collection based on existing
reliable country information, and sampling of high-resolution satellite data.
The two components have proved to be a cost-effective combination for the
collection of relevant and reliable base information. The value of
statistically linking the two approaches is yet to be exploited;
(c) Environmental parameters, including additional work on concepts,
terminology (working definitions) and methods and on the actual assessment,
with a focus on the above-mentioned "hot spots" - biomass, biological
diversity and forest degradation, plus soil and water conservation;
(d) Cooperation with other actors in order to join resources and
share results. There are prospects for progress in particular in the field of
remote- sensing, where a need has been identified to produce, among other
things, vegetation maps with world-wide coverage and reliable and
internationally comparable forest cover change information for developed
countries;
(e) Efforts to harmonize concepts, terminology, definitions and
classifications.
VI. ISSUES FOR FURTHER CONSIDERATION
47. The Panel may wish to identify issues that need to be given special
attention:
(a) The lack of basic information. This calls for capacity-building
in information-gathering to be integrated with capacity-building in strategic
planning and decision-making;
(b) A study, at the international level, of the uses and users of
forest resources information. This is particularly important when new types
of information to be included in the FAO forest resources assessment are
discussed;
(c) Intensified use of data already available, for example, in the
databases and archives of the FAO forest resources assessment. Those data, in
combination with other data sets and studies based on them, in response to
user needs, can be used to respond to questions of urgency in a cost-effective
way;
(d) Improving the capacity of countries with special problems,
notably countries in transition. This will address a deficiency with regard
to the quality of certain international information and will assist those
countries in creating a better basis for strategic planning at the national
level;
(e) The establishment and development of proper national
institutions. Forest resources assessment can be useful only if the necessary
institutions to use the information produced are in place;
(f) The integration of indicators for sustainable forest management
into forest resources assessments. This means that indicators must be
quantifiable and measurable, that the assessment of such indicators can be
integrated in a cost-effective manner, and that adequate funding must be
provided;
(g) Research on forest inventory and monitoring techniques to expand
the scope of forest assessments to cover, in a cost-effective manner, the
demand for new information;
(h) Mobilization of funding. Due consideration should be given to
the fact that the costs for forest inventory make up a minute fraction of the
actual or potential revenues from forests;
(i) Coordination of efforts at the international level. There is
readiness among actors to contribute to common products. International
activities such as the Global Terrestrial Observing System and the
International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme are examples of existing
cooperation. Findings could enhance global assessments. However, the
technical and practical obstacles must not be underestimated;
(j) Dissemination of information to those countries and stakeholders
that have difficulties in accessing internationally available information.
Notes
1/ Official Records of the Economic and Social Council, 1995,
Supplement No. 12 (E/1995/32), para. 204, annex I, part III.III.
2/ E/CN.17/IPF/1995/3, para. 18.
3/ Report of the United Nations Conference on Environment and
Development, Rio de Janeiro, 3-14 June 1992 (A/CONF.151/26/Rev.1 (Vol. I and
Vol. I/Corr.1, Vol. II, Vol. III and Vol. III/Corr.1)) (United Nations
publication, Sales No. E.93.I.8 and corrigenda), vol. I: Resolutions adopted
by the Conference, resolution 1, annex II, chap. II, para. 11.29.
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Date last posted: 7 December 1999 12:45:30
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