Since 1996, FAO has worked toward the development of a continuous monitoring programme of forests at the global level, or World Forest Survey (WFS). This programme is intended to extend a statistical sample over the entire world following new stratification criteria to improve its efficiency. At present, due to several technical and financial considerations, a phase-in of the new long-term Global Continuous Monitoring Programme is being envisioned along with the implementation of the 2000 Update for the year 2000 assessment. Ultimately, the WFS will provide continuously updated country level data, with global reports and analyses published at 5 year intervals In this document, we concentrate on the tropical FRA2000, but keeping the development of a global monitoring programme in mind for after the year 2000.
The participants in the Expert Advisory meeting reviewed the current state of FAO thinking on the WFS concept and agreed that the FRA program of the FAO should take the lead in developing a proposal for a World Forest Survey. The proposal should identify the potential customers, costs and benefits of such a system. A logical first step in such a process should be to further identify potential WFS customers and their needs. It was further agreed that the FRA team should prepare a technical document on the WFS concept, to be shared with the global forest monitoring community and that a future Expert Advisory meeting should be called to help move the concept towards implementation.
Figure 1. Schematic diagram showing the steps used to take available data and arrive at a final country level estimate.