Workshop on forests and biological diversity
Conservation and sustainable use of forest biological diversity is an integral and essential part of sustainable forest management. Urgent action is required to improve efforts to prevent the continuing loss of biological diversity in forests. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) have important and complementary roles in addressing this problem. Collaboration between these two entities can strengthen their ability to support and guide immediate and effective action by governments and other bodies. Such collaboration will also facilitate the integration of forest biodiversity considerations in national development programmes, which will be vital for effective implementation of the CBD.
To explore opportunities for collaboration among the CBD, UNFF and the Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF), the Workshop on Forest and Biological Diversity was held in Accra, Ghana from 28 to 30 January 2002. Experts from 20 countries and several international and non-governmental organizations attended the workshop, which was hosted by the Government of Ghana.
Participants suggested a range of ways in which collaboration could be carried out, including sharing of expertise; development of position papers for use by both UNFF and CBD; and joint intersessional processes to solve specific problems.
The workshop identified four areas in which collaborative work could be undertaken (recognizing that other possible areas could be added to this list):
The workshop recommended that UNFF and CBD convene a small group to review progress in collaborative work in two years' time and recommend future collaborative initiatives.
The report of the workshop will be submitted for consideration at the second meeting of UNFF in March 2002 and at the sixth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to CBD in April 2002.
While the workshop focused on collaboration between CBD and UNFF, it was recognized that there are many other bodies addressing issues of relevance to forest biodiversity, such as the other members of the CPF, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD), and collaboration with these bodies is also important.
Multifunctional forest management in the mountains of Europe
Mountainous countries face the problem of how to ensure adequate management of mountain forests to maintain their protective roles regarding settlements, infrastructures and the environment. Management priorities in mountainous forests in Europe have changed drastically in recent decades, as the importance of timber production has steadily decreased, whereas other functions have became more dominant. In response, countries have developed their own policy measures to cope with these challenges but their suitability is not always clear. Thus it is desirable to evaluate existing concepts in the light of socio-economic changes as well as progress in technology.
A Concerted Action on Multifunctional Forest Management in Mountainous Areas (MUFOMA) was established within the FAIR programme of the European Community. FAIR, an acronym for the programme "Agriculture and Fisheries (including Agro-industry, Food Technologies, Forestry, Aquaculture and Rural Development)", is aimed at promoting research in the European primary production food and non-food sectors of agriculture, horticulture, fisheries and aquaculture and to consolidate links with the processing industries and the consumer. The aim of the Concerted Action was to evaluate existing national policy programmes and silvicultural techniques related to mountain forests in various European countries, with regard to conception, practice, effectiveness and efficiency. This process involved collaboration among silvicultural and forest policy scientists from nine European countries as well as representatives of the public forest administration and local stakeholders. The Concerted Action carried out a comparative analysis of problems in mountain forestry and the new approaches applied to overcome these problems, based on analytical workshops and field demonstration stands in different countries. The results indicated that in many countries the degradation of forests is the result of different non-coordinated uses. Multifunctional forest management (MFM) is seen as a viable option to address this situation.
Further information is available on the MUFOMA Web site: www.forst.uni-muenchen.de/EXT/LST/WALDB/mufoma/mufoma.html
