The "Strengthening Country Capacity in Forest Resource Assessment for
Sustainable Forest Planning in the Asia Pacific Region (GCP/RAS/162/JPN)" project is a trust fund project with financial support from the government of Japan. It supplements Forest Resources Assessment program of FAO to fill current gaps in forest resource information. It became operational on April 1st, 1998 and is scheduled to close on Dec 31, 2000.
The project derives its basis from FRA 1990 which indicated a very unsatisfactory condition not only in gathering, analyzing and reporting of forest information but also in making its use for sustainable forest planning and forest resource assessment at national and regional levels in all South Asian countries. None of the countries have carried out a comprehensive national forest inventories to support forest planning and forest policy development. Further, these countries are not using appropriate techniques for change assessment such as Continuous Forest Inventory design and are repeating the technique of single shot inventories at non-regular time intervals.
The project identifies that the main use of FRA information is for sustainable forest planning and therefore, any capacity building program should include improving capacities for information collection, storage, sharing and use of information. Accordingly, the mission of the project is to.
“Strengthen country capacities for collecting better information and using it for efficient forest planning to sustain forest resources”.
The recommendations of UNCED Agenda 21 guide the capacity building process of the project. The project takes a holistic view of forest resources assessment needs including, problem definition, institutional development, forest resources information systems, human resources development, financial resources, and technology transfer.
The project perceives a three dimensional strategy, (a) review, organize and disseminate the existing knowledge through a technical cooperation network, (b) develop, adapt and demonstrate new knowledge with the help of selected field projects, and (c) implement the above two tasks with close co-operation and participation of the country institutions.
Due to the vastness and complexity of the task the project provides to develop a network and establish synergic relation with related projects, people and institutions with national or international mandate.
The project expects following two outputs and associated activities to achieve its objectives:
Output 1: Strengthen Capacity for Sustainable Forestry Development
through following associated activities,
a. Review of Planning practices
b. Review of Forest Database
c. Identification of information needs for Forest planning
d. Development of modern strategic plans at different levels
e. Development of design for data collection and processing.
Output 2: Transfer of appropriate techniques and technologies to countries
Through following associated activities:
a. Training sessions through host country institutions
b. Fellowships in host country institutions
The four day regional workshop during April 2000 at Thimpu, Bhutan was organized in the framework of this project GCP/RAS/162/JPN. The theme of the workshop was “The Forest Resource Planning, Database Management and Networking for Sustainable Forest Management. The workshop was held in close co-operation with the Forestry Services Department of the Royal Government of Bhutan.
The workshop was intended for participants from Bhutan, Bangladesh, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Myanmar. It was expected that three participants from each country including the current counterpart officer for this project would attend the workshop. Participants were to come prepared with country reports and documents for detailed technical discussion.
It was intended that the workshop would be able to identify weaknesses in the fields of forest planning, database and networking and make valuable and implementable suggestions to overcome them. It was also to finalize the program for this project during the year 2000 and draft an outline for the activities proposed beyond the year 2000.
Workshop was organized in close cooperation of Regional Project Coordinator, Forest Services Department, Royal Government of Bhutan, and FAO Representation at Bhutan. In addition to the four-day workshop was attended by three participants from project countries and Myanmar in addition to special invitees from Bhutan Forestry Services and other agencies at Thimpu.
The inauguration session started with a welcome address by Mr. U. Thinley, Director Forestry Services, and Bhutan. The Mr. P. Dorji, officer in charge, FAO Representation at Bhutan threw light on the purpose of the workshop and welcomed the participants to the workshop. The Secretary (Agriculture) to Royal Government of Bhutan gave the Key Note address. Finally, a vote of thanks by Mr. D. B. Dhital marked the closure of the inauguration ceremony. The technical activities of the workshop spread over six technical sessions and a field trip to FMU (Forest Management Unit) and discussion on its planning, plan and management. Each technical session elected a chairperson (by rotation) and a reporter. The six technical sessions deliberated on forest planning, forestry database, forest networking, forest cover change, new initiatives (World forest Survey and Regional Forest policy) and final recommendations. The workshop closed with the concluding session addressed by FAO (Dr. Peter Holmgren and Dr. Kailash Govil), and representative of participants (Mr. A. K. Wahal and Mr. Tariq Nazir), and the host organization (Mr. U. Thinley and Mr. D. B. Dhital).
The second workshop achieved its planned objectives with the active participation of the country delegates and resource persons. The workshop succeeded in generating a feeling among forestry personnel to work jointly on various forestry issues that are common among their countries. The workshop was able to identify commonalties, variations, strengths, weaknesses in the field of forest planning, forest databases, and networking in the project countries. In addition, it endorsed implementation of WFS and establishment of a regional forest forum /center to facilitate different international, regional and national obligations of these countries and to resolve many of the cross-boundary forest and wildlife-related issues.
