NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

The year 2000 is an important baseline for a number of forest-related studies including the FAO coordinated Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA 2000), to be released at the 15^th Session of the Committee on Forestry in March 2001. The FRA 2000 estimates of forest cover and change are based on available national reports, verified in expert meetings and scrutinised through expert advice; information on forest cover change is also supported by remote sensing studies. While deforestation is still very high, the trend towards slowing down, noted already in the interim assessments of 1997 and 1999, has been confirmed (see information in this issue).

In addition to being linked to a number of related forest genetic resources and forest biological diversity related information systems, the FAO World Wide Information System on Forest Genetic Resources, REFORGEN, recently made available on the Forest Genetic Resources Homepage, will in the future be electronically linked to FRA Home Pages. Information provided through REFORGEN, coupled with forest resources data provided by FRA, will help underpin national policies and support decision-making and priority setting in forest genetic resources activities at national, regional and global levels. An up-date on REFORGEN is given in the article by Søren Hald. The article by Namkoong in this issue reviews general principles of priority setting.

The information presently lodged in REFORGEN is far from complete. The regional and sub-regional workshops on forest genetic resources, which FAO is supporting in collaboration with international partners, will provide one mechanism to review, up-date and complement such information. Workshops have, to date, covered forests of the boreal zone, temperate North America and Europe (all organized in 1995), the Sahelian and North Sudanian zones of Africa (1998), the South Pacific (1999), and Southern and Eastern Africa (2000). A report on the latest workshop can be found in the present issue, in addition to an up-date on follow-up to the South Pacific workshop (see articles by Sigaud/Luhanga and by Kanawi Pouru).

A topical issue in today's debate is the place and role of new technologies, notably genetic modification, in plant breeding. Earlier this year, FAO organized a series of e-mail conferences on biotechnologies in crop, animal, fish and forest genetic resources. The article by Yanchuk, who has worked with the forest genetic resources team at FAO Headquarters, Rome, over the past 8 months in capacity of Visiting Scientist, summarises the outcome of the forest genetic resources conference.

Other articles review action by FAO partners IPGRI and ICRAF, and by national institutes in some FAO member countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Nutshell information on activities of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), with special reference to its working group on forest biological diversity and the close collaboration between the CBD and FAO in this field, is also provided.

In his report to the Millennium Assembly of the United Nations entitled, "We the Peoples: the Role of the United Nations in the Twenty-First Century", Secretary-General Kofi Annan noted that the United Nations must increasingly serve to stimulate collective action at the global level, and to catalyse such action both among its Member States and between them and the vibrant constellations of new non-state actors. These principles should underpin our future work in forest genetic resources and will inspire ever greater, joint efforts in the coming Millennium.

Contributions from readers, not exceeding 2000 words, are welcome for future issues. The Secretariat maintains the right to edit material accepted for publication.