UNITED NATIONS FORUM ON FORESTS TO MEET AT HEADQUARTERS 11-22 JUNE

UNITED NATIONS FORUM ON FORESTS TO MEET AT HEADQUARTERS 11-22 JUNE

The United Nations Forum on Forests will meet for the first time as a new subsidiary body of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) at Headquarters from 11 to 22 June 2001.

The Forum has been established to facilitate implementation of forest-related agreements, foster a common understanding of sustainable forest management and address forest issues and emerging areas of priority concern.  The first session will focus on setting the global forest agenda for the next five years and develop a plan of action -- a platform to advance the implementation of agreed actions on forests.  The session will also set into motion the Forum’s work with the Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF), which includes forest-related international organizations and instruments.  The Forum will also decide on its contribution to the World Summit on Sustainable Development, the 10-year review of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (“Earth Summit”), to be held in Johannesburg in September 2002.

A multi-year programme of work for the Forum for the next five years, will be decided upon at the first session.  The Forum will have before it the Report of the Secretary-General on the Multi-Year Programme of Work (document E/CN.18/2001/5), containing the basic framework of the programme of work, the contents of which are designed to promote management, conservation and sustainable development of all types of forests and strengthen long-term political commitment to that end.  It also considers such issues as the schedule of the ministerial segments and organization of multi-stakeholder dialogues at the Forum and the establishment and schedule of international expert groups to advance forest-related issues for negotiations during Forum sessions.

The Forum will also have before it the Report of the Secretary-General on the Plan of Action (document E/CN.18/2001/6).  The report proposes a two-step approach towards the development of the Forum’s plan of action.  As a first step, the Forum will decide on the programmatic components of the plan, approaches for addressing key issues such as financial provisions; defining targets and timetables; and the monitoring, assessment and reporting on progress.  The next step will be the adoption of the plan of action, envisaged for the second substantive session next year.

Background

Forests are vital to the social and economic well-being of people.  They provide a wide range of needed wood and non-wood products and indispensable environmental services such as soil and water conservation, reservoir of

biological diversity and mitigation of climate change through carbon storage and sequestration.

Many of the essential environmental benefits of forests are fundamentally transboundary in nature, extending beyond the borders of countries where the forests are located.  The multiple benefits and aspects of forests have attracted a large number of special interest groups, leading to, more often than not, conflicting demands and controversies on the use of forests at national, regional and global levels.

The world’s total forest area is estimated to be 3,870 million hectares, of which 95 per cent are natural forests and 5 per cent plantations.  About 56 per cent of forest worldwide are tropical/subtropical and 44 per cent are temperate/boreal forests.  The forest cover is not equally distributed; about

85 per cent of the total forest cover is contained in just 25 countries and just seven of those countries -- Russia, Brazil, Canada, United States, China, Australia and the Democratic Republic of Congo -- account for about 60 per cent of the world’s forests. 

In the developing world, in excess of 500 million people in over

70 developing countries live in and around forests and depend on them for their daily subsistence and general well being.  However, the rate of worldwide deforestation is a cause for alarm.  The current global deforestation rate is estimated at about 14.6 million hectares per year.  Deforestation is greatest in the tropics.  The major causes of deforestation and forest degradation lie outside the forest sector, the main one being clearing for agricultural production. 

The total production of wood, worldwide, is about 3,300 million cubic meters annually.  Approximately half of the wood harvested in the world is used as fuel wood, 90 per cent of which is produced and consumed in developing countries.  In developed countries, on the other hand, nearly 80 per cent of the wood harvested is mainly for industrial use, such as timber and paper production.  Current estimates suggest that it would be possible to meet the world demand for forest products in a sustainable manner until the year 2050.  However, some developing countries, particularly the ones with low forest cover, may lack the necessary finances to import their needs for wood products from producer countries.

Forests as an International Policy Issue

Significant progress has been made in the development of international forest policy measures since the Earth Summit.  In the past decade, the main focus within the United Nations has been to develop coherent policies to promote the management, conservation and sustainable development of all types of forests.  During the past five years, forest policy issues have been dealt with by the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests (IPF) and the Intergovernmental Forum on Forests (IFF), both under the aegis of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), a functional commission of ECOSOC, which was established to ensure effective follow up to the Earth Summit.

A wide range of forest issues has been deliberated in the IPF/IFF process.  Some of these issues are related to:  decision-making; policy tools, including national forest programmes and criteria and indicators; information and public participation; scientific knowledge; traditional forest-related knowledge; as well as monitoring, assessment and reporting on progress towards sustainable forest management.  Other issues address forest resources and their management, such as deforestation and forest degradation, forest health and productivity, rehabilitation and maintaining forest cover, as well as forest conservation and protection of unique types of forests.  Another set of issues concerns international cooperation and capacity building, particularly regarding financial resources, international trade, and transfer of environmentally sound technologies.

At the fourth and final meeting of the IFF in February 2000, consensus was reached on most of these issues.  However, the issues concerning legal and financial mechanisms towards sustainable forest management remained too politically sensitive and controversial for governments to reach a final agreement.  Therefore, the Forum has been charged with assessing, within five years, the possibility of a legal framework on all types of forests, as well as taking steps to improve financial and technology transfer support to assist developing countries in their effort towards implementing sustainable forest management.

United Nations Forum on Forests

The ECOSOC, by its resolution 2000/35, established the Forum as a subsidiary body with universal membership.  The Forum is a high-level intergovernmental body with ministerial segments that will allow policy development and dialogue; promote the implementation of agreed actions towards sustainable forest management; enhance international coordination and cooperation in order to effectively address forest-related issues and strengthen political commitment to sustainable management and conservation of all types of forests.  The Forum welcomes the participation of civil society and will hold multi-stakeholder dialogues at each session, in order to consider the inputs of various forest-related stakeholders.

Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF)

Last year the ECOSOC invited the executive heads of international organizations and instruments related to forests to form the Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF) to enhance international coordination and cooperation.  The CPF was established earlier this year and was based on the experience of the high-level, informal Interagency Task Force on Forests (ITFF) during the last six years.  The ITFF was highly commended by the IPF and IFF as an example of an effective arrangement for international cooperation and coordination among international organizations and instruments relevant to forests.  The current members of the CPF are:  Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity; Center for International Forestry Research; Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat; Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO); International Tropical Timber Organization; United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP); and the World Bank.  In addition, the Secretariats of the Convention to Combat Desertification, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) have been invited to join the CPF. 

Today there are some 40 international organizations and 20 agreements that have forest-related programmes and mandates, and the CPF has thus initiated the establishment of a CPF Network to facilitate cooperation and communication with a wide range of other partners.

The establishment of the CPF, as a new international partnership on forests, represents the willingness and commitment of the CPF member organizations to support the work of the Forum and to enhance cooperation and coordination among its partners, including by intensifying joint programming and to further gearing their current programmes towards the objectives of the Forum.

For media inquiries, please contact: Klomjit Chandrapanya, Department of Public Information, at 212-963-9495, e-mail: chandrapanya@un.org;

or Mia Soderlund, Secretariat of the United Nations Forum on Forest,

at 212-963-9875, e-mail: soderlund@un.org.

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