European forestry commission
Technical assistance reports
A forestry program for Africa
Turkey acted as host to the eighth session of the permanent Working Party on Afforestation and Reforestation of FAO's European Forestry Commission, held from 21 to 25 April 1959 under the chairmanship of Sir Henry Beresford-Peirse (United Kingdom) and with J. de Vaissière (France) serving as Rapporteur.
The working party reviewed the afforestation and reforestation operations reported as having been carried out by the member countries of the region during 1958. Extensions of existing forests amounted to 281,000 hectares, and 241,000 hectares of degraded forest had been subject to improvement treatment, which was a satisfactory balance. The area of new plantations established outside reserved forests proper reached 38,000 hectares.
Present costs of planting operations came in for a considerable amount of discussion, and it was decided to make further detailed investigations. The costs of soil preparation are to be distinguished from expenditure on actual planting work.
The labor situation for forestry work was reviewed on the basis of a preliminary enquiry carried out by the Secretariat. Reliable figures were lacking on workers employed and on their terms of employment, and it was proposed that a more detailed survey be made in co-operation with the International Labour Organisation.
Before this session in Turkey, members of the EFC Working Party on Torrent Control had been invited by the Greek Government to make a short study tour in the region of Salonika and the Strymon valley to see watershed management work. This tour was held from 19 to 21 April and the participants then went on to Istanbul, where they joined the members of the other working party. All then took part in a meeting and study tour organized jointly with the Subcommission on Land and Water Use of FAO's European Commission on Agriculture (ECA).
This was a first attempt at the international level to hold field discussions between agriculturists and foresters on problems of land-use, and it met with commendable degree of success. The tour was well prepared by the Agriculture or Forest Administration of the Turkish Government and led the participants first to catchment areas in the immediate vicinity of Istanbul, where were posed special problems attaching to the extension of large urban areas, then to Izmit, Bursa and Izmir.
On-the-spot discussions were followed by meetings of small discussion groups, and finally by a plenary meeting presided over by Mr. G. R. Ytterborn, Chairman of the ECA Subcommission, and with the Chairman of EFC Working Party on Afforestation and Reforestation acting as Rapporteur. The results of these discussions have been conveyed to the two parent bodies.
The exchange of views that took place was of considerable interest, and suggests that permanent machinery should be established both at the national and international level, for consultation and co-ordination between agriculturists, foresters and engineers concerned with problems of land-use and soil and water conservation. There are many subjects of common interest which demand common consideration. Although limited to the European region, this experiment may reveal a pattern for better coordination between foresters and agriculturists in other parts of the world also.
Over 1,000 reports of technical assistance missions have now been issued by FAO. These reports incorporate the conclusions and recommendations made by technical assistance officers on completion of their field assignments in individual countries.
A fifth of the reports issued to date deal with forestry in its widest sense, and they relate to missions carried out in 50 countries: 23 percent concern countries in the Asia and Far East region, 18 percent, Europe, 36 percent; Latin America; 14 percent, the Near East; and 3 percent, Africa.
It is to be recalled that the FAO Expanded Technical Assistance Program first got under way with the signing of agreements for advice on forestry development in Guatemala and Burma in September 1950. The first formal technical assistance report on forestry to be submitted to a Government by FAO was An Austrian Investment Program for Forestry and Forest Industries, drawn up by Egon Glesinger (now Director of FAO's Forestry and Forest Products Division) and D. R. Cameron, then head of FAO's European forestry office. This was presented to the Austrian Government in 1950. The most recent to be issued (ETAP Report No. 1087) deals with a logging training center in India.
The greatest number of forestry reports, nearly one quarter, have dealt with the planning of forest and forest industries development in 31 different countries, ranging from the geographical extremes of the Amazon basin of Brazil to Afghanistan. Pulp and paper development surveys were carried out in 1952/53 in 17 countries throughout the world, as well as in the Caribbean area and Central America. In the past twelve months, surveys have been made on the possible developments in the teakwood trade of Burma, the forest industry prospects of Ghana, and the timber potential of Liberia.
Forest surveys and mapping have been executed by FAO technical assistance officers on areas where little if any such work had been done hitherto, for instance, selected forest areas of the Amazon basin and the northern teak-bearing forests of Thailand. The use of aerial photography for forest inventory work has been the subject of 11 reports to seven countries.
It the field of forest and forest products research, 22 missions hare been carried out in 12 countries. Assignments in silviculture and planting have been made in 18 countries, ranging from Paraguay to Malta. Soil conservation, watershed management and forest range management are the subjects of other reports. Sixteen reports are concerned specifically with timber extraction, from the logging of pulpwood in Indonesia to mountain logging in Mexico. The development of sawmills, plywood mills and other primary industries accounts for many more reports
FAO has sponsored or participated in the organization of many regional projects, training centers, and symposia held in various parts of the world. Reports have been issued, for instance, covering a forest fire control study tour held in the United States of America, a study tour on eucalypts organized in Australia, another on the silviculture of plantations held in Czechoslovakia, and a study tour on arid-zone forestry that took place in the U.S.S.R. in 1956.
Each technical assistance report is, of course, in the first instance a confidential report made to government authorities. Usually, however, the Government concerned agrees to the general release of the document after a certain period, and a limited number of copies can generally be supplied on request. Reports, as they appear, are noted in Forestry Abstracts, published by the Commonwealth Forestry Bureau, Oxford, England.
Africa, it is commonly said, is a continent in ferment. The Ninth Session of the FAO Conference, 1957, devoted a considerable amount of time to debating what should be FAO's role and policy in the region. It decided to establish in Africa, as had earlier been done for other regions, a regional office through which co-ordination could be strengthened between governments in the fields of activity covered by the Organization. Since then, the Director-General has appointed Mr. P. Terver, a former member of the Forestry and Forest Products Division, as his Regional Representative. Forestry officers will join the regional office which is to be established initially at Accra, Ghana, toward the close of this year. A small group is also to work with the new United Nations Economic Commission for Africa at Addis Ababa, and the next session of the FAO Conference, meeting in November 1959, will consider creating two other subregional offices.
When the tasks already accomplished and the work that lies ahead of the forest services of the various countries of Africa are compared it is seen that, while much has been done, yet much still remains to be achieved in the field of forestry. Budget restrictions and the emphasis given to industrial and agricultural development threaten to decrease the resources made available to forest services which might result in a reduction of already insufficient cadres. Governments need to be constantly reminded that the forest is a source of direct or indirect wealth, and has a very definite role to play in land use, soil conservation and the regulation of stream flow; and that these values are constantly and often increasingly menaced from all sides. Agriculture livestock breeding and industrial plantations are clamoring for new land. And from within, the selective character of timber exploitation which concentrates only on species of the highest commercial value, may bring about the irrevocable impoverishment of extensive areas.
Surveys of the natural forest resources and the study of their behavior by observation and through the development of research, which is particularly the concern of the Commission for Technical Co-operation in Africa South of the Sahara (CCTA), are still only partially-explored realms of activity, and their results must be correlated to other studies on trends in wood requirements. The lack of such surveys has often given rise to an idea of the inexhaustibility of the forest resources of certain areas of the region, which has sometimes placed the forest services in an even more difficult situation when asking for the funds to carry out their work.
Land-use planning is an immediate necessity in the face of increasing demographic pressure and economic expansion. During the course of the struggle for authority which often accompanies periods of national evolution, there is a constant risk of the removal of the few deterrents that it has been possible to raise in the course of years in opposition to the irrational destruction of forest land. There is, therefore, urgent need here for the sort of action for which FAO was created and which it bears direct responsibility for developing.
To keep matters before the attention of national authorities in other regions, FAO has established intergovernment Regional Forestry Commissions. These meet at periodic intervals to review the progress of national forest policies. Views on development programs are exchanged and the obstacles encountered are examined in the light of experience acquired in other countries. This exchange of ideas and the opportunities created for personal contacts have considerable value in themselves. But what is more important is that recommendations can be made to the governments of the region for the adoption of measures calculated to assist in the development of the forest economy. These recommendations, coming from an international body created by the governments themselves, generally carry more weight than if presented by the individual forest services. It is possible that member countries in Africa will ask the Organization in due course to set up a similar regional forestry commission to promote forest development in that region.
