Global forest survey concept paper

Global forest survey concept paper

Descripción

The Forestry Department of FAO is developing a Global Forest Survey (GFS) following its broad mandate to carry out global assessments of forests and forestry. The GFS would be part of the Forest Reources Assessment Programme and would complement the compilation and analyses of national reports and information. The current paper outlines the background and suggested approach. The GFS would be a large undertaking that would rely on FAO’s role for coordinating global information efforts, as well as funding and implementation by international organisations and governments. The GFS has a strong emphasis on FAO’s coordinating and facilitating role, inviting partners to implement the survey through independent country projects. The background to the GFS is the gap between required and available information on forests and forestry. Despite considerable attention in international fora over the past decades, information on basic forestry parameters is still missing or of a poor quality for most countries. Systematic inventories are carried out only by a small proportion of the world’s countries. The efforts to establish forest inventories in developing countries have generally not lead to ongoing monitoring of the resources and its use, nor to a sustained capacity to carry out forest surveys. Requirements for forest and forestry information are large and undisputable. On national level, quality information is required for policy development, implementation and monitoring. Without relev ant base information, it is not possible to reliably outline optional courses, nor to evaluate the effects of previous decisions. On the international level, several processes, notably those dealing with carbon cycling and biodiversity, require quality controlled input to models and analyses as well as monitoring systems. Such information is today largely missing.