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Many countries provided national or subnational codes of forest practice for use in preparing this document. Others contributed guidelines on "best practices", which foresters and planners are encouraged to prescribe for commercial timber harvesting operations. Nearly all these codes of practice and best-practice guidelines originated in industrialized countries. A notable exception is the Fiji national code of logging practice, which was a particularly useful reference because it originated in a tropical developing country.
Several international organizations such as INTO and IUCN have developed guidelines on sustainable forest management that contain information on forest harvesting practices and thus were useful in this undertaking. ILO has published extensively on health and safety issues relating to forest harvesting practices and considerable use was made of those publications. We also used published materials from UNDP, Unesco, UNEP and the World Bank.
Numerous non-governmental organizations provided guidelines on sustainable forest management or referred us to relevant publications. We particularly acknowledge contributions made by APA, CIRAD-Forêt, COFE, ETFRN, FSC, FERIC, IIED, ITW, ISTF, IUCN, IUFRO, the Rainforest Alliance, SAF, TFF, WWF International and WWFUK.
A great many individuals contributed to this work. Some of these, the experts who attended the FAO workshops on codes of forest harvesting practice, as well as those who provided detailed review comments on the draft, are listed in an annex to this document. Bernt Strehlke and Peter Blombäck of ILO gave extensive suggestions for the chapter on the forest harvesting workforce. Within FAO, colleagues who provided reference materials or reviewed various drafts of the manuscript include, in alphabetical order, km Ball, C. Chandrasekharan, Mafa Chipeta, William Ciesla, Louis Deherve, Stephen Dembner, Timo Korhonen, Jean-Paul Lanly, Claude Léger, Leo Lintu, Francis Ng, Christel Palmberg-Lerche, J.L. de Pedro, Robert Scharpenberg, Friedrich Schlegel, Karl-Hermann Schmincke, K.D. Singh and Paul Vantomme. From FAO's regional offices, Torsten Frisk (Santiago, Chile), M. Kashio (Bangkok, Thailand) and J.D. Keita (Accra, Ghana) helped us obtain materials relevant to those regions. Josiane Hababou-Zamperini worked long hours taking care of correspondence and helping to organize the workshops.
Librarians are essential to any compilation project. The FAO Forestry Department is fortunate to have two outstanding and exceptionally helpful forestry librarians, Franca Monti and Annalisa Casponi, whose assistance is gratefully acknowledged. The compilation of information on forest practices in the tropics also involved a week of intensive library research at Oxford University, which is recognized as having one of the top tropical forestry libraries in the world. This research was greatly facilitated by Ms J.S. Howse, tire Reader Services Librarian in the Plant Sciences Library, Oxford Forestry Institute.
Many other individuals contributed to this work in various ways, but unfortunately their number is so great that their names cannot be listed individually. Nevertheless their contributions were essential and we acknowledge their assistance with thanks.
Comments on this model code, toghether with accounts of experience with its use, will be welcome.
They should be sent to:
R.Heinrich
Chief, Forest Harvesting, Trade and Marketing Branch (FOPH)
FAO Forestry Department Viale delle Terme di Caracalla 00100
Rome, Italy