Forests Sourcebook - HCV Resource Network

Box 7.5
The Forest Resource Assessment Program of FAO
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has
played a key role over the past 50 years in providing forest
sector information at the global level, having recognized
that reliable information and knowledge about forest
resources is essential for sound policy development,
forest resource management, and integration with overall
sustainable development efforts in a country. Monitoring,
assessment, and reporting on forests and forest
products are some of the main activities of the FAO.
FAO’s Forest Resources Assessment (FRA) program
uses the concept of sustainable forest management and
reports on six of the seven thematic elements common
among the nine regional Criteria and Indicators
processes. These elements include extent of forest
resources, growing stock, biomass stock, carbon stock,
forest health, forests under productive purposes, plantations,
and removal of wood and nonwood forest
products from forests (www.fao.org/forestry/fra). The
Forest Sector Outlook studies (www.fao.org/forestry/
site/5606/en), State of the World’s Forests (www.fao
.org/forestry/site/21407/en), and other FAO publications
serve the seven thematic areas in achieving the overall
mission of enhancing human well-being (see box figure).
Information from the FRA is accepted by international
processes, conventions, and agencies, such as
CBD, IPCC, and the United Nations Environmental
Programme (UNEP), and by all countries. The FRA is
a collaborative and participative effort of experts
within and outside the FAO, and includes national
experts in all countries (members and nonmembers of
FAO). More than 800 such experts contributed to FRA
2005, and more than 170 officially nominated national
correspondents provided and validated its contents.
The information compiled by FAO’s FRA is the
most comprehensive to date. It relies on aggregating
national-level forest inventory information, which is
reported by countries to FAO, to provide a global picture
of forest cover and forest cover change every 10
years. Spatially explicit estimates of tree cover change
based on repeated measurements would provide much
needed information beyond what is readily available
from the FRA. Such a spatial assessment would be useful
in that it would provide comprehensive information
that can be periodically updated, yield measures of
change at the global scale, and help identify areas that
need to be examined more closely.
MISSION
Human well-being
GOAL
Poverty reduction through
sustainable management of the
forests sector
STRATEGIC OUTCOME
FROM MONITORING
Integrating forests more
effectively into
sustainable development
Harnessing the potential of
forests to reduce poverty in
a sustainable manner
Protecting vital local and global
environmental services and values
Extent
of
forest
resources
Forest
health and
vitality
Productive
function
of forest
resources
Institutional
and policy
framework
Conservation
of
biodiversity
Protective
function of
forest
resources
Socioeconomic
functions
Source: Govil 2006.
CHAPTER 7: MONITORING AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS FOR FOREST MANAGEMENT 253