The Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)  is prepared from a global view of the world's forests and how these resources are changing to support policy-making and the monitoring of international commitments related to forests and forestry.

27 March 2023,  Panama City – In Panama City, Panama, the FRA team of the FAO Forestry Division is holding the FRA 2025 workshop for Latin America, for which the countries of the region are making progress in the preparation of the report on the Global Forest Resources Assessment, which FAO has been publishing since 1946 with data obtained from each of the countries.

The objective of this workshop is to support country delegates to report national forest data to FAO, following FRA terms and definitions, considering that the interpretation can vary in each country. "The goal is to ensure that national data are comparable, since the definition of forests and deforestation can change depending on the countries, so we help them to translate and introduce the data in the FAO platform," explained Xavier De Lamo, FAO Forestry Officer. 

The FRA data platform is a new tool that has been available for 5 years to countries. It is designed to help them enter national data through a simpler methodology with functionalities to detect possible data entry errors.

Since 2005, the backbone of the FRA has been data provided by a well-established network of National Correspondents officially nominated by their member countries through national reports. 

"FAO's forestry work is governed by the Committee on Forestry for which all FAO member countries are represented by the head of the Forestry Division, who is the representative of his or her country's government," De Lamo explained.

In the case of the Latin American workshop, representatives of the governments and government agencies of Panama, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela are participating.

Xavier De Lamo added that the last assessment on this topic was published in 2020, and that the next report is expected to be published in 2025. At the moment, FAO and the participating countries are in the reporting period, in which regional workshops are being implemented.

The expected outcome of this regional workshop for Latin America is to advance in the development of the national reports, from which the global report is made.