Geneva
The UNECE/FAO Timber Section has just launched its periodical enquiry on the state of forests and forest management in Europe. National correspondents from 46 countries in the pan-European region were invited to provide information on the status and changes of forests, their management and applied policies. Indicators monitored cover forest health and vitality, productive functions, the protection of biodiversity and the protective functions as well as the social and economic dimensions of forest management. The national enquiries include a broad variety of numeric data, both general (e.g. area, growing stock, carbon) and specific (e.g. defoliation, trade, employment etc.), as well as a description of the policies, institutions and financial instruments developed in the pan-European region.
The results will be presented in the State of Europe’s Forests report, which will be released at the 6th Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe (Forest Europe), to be held in 2011 in Norway.
The results of this enquiry, the most comprehensive of its kind on pan-European forests, offer a particularly valuable source of information both for practitioners and policy makers.
Note to editors
The first assessment of this kind was performed by UNECE/FAO in 1947.
The enquiry, which is performed every 4 years, is structured according to the pan-European Criteria and Indicators for sustainable forest management endorsed by Forest Europe in 2003.
This assessment is prepared together with Forest Europe’s Liaison Unit Oslo and in close cooperation with the FAO Forestry Department. The national enquiries address issues that are important and specific to Europe, and are at the same time harmonized with the data collection system for the FAO Global Forest Resources Assessment. National reporting will be supplemented by data collected by other organizations - Eurostat, EU Joint Research Centre, International Cooperative Programme on Forests and Bioversity International.
The results of the previous reporting of 2007 are available at http://timber.unece.org/index.php?id=33 (final report and related material)
and http://w3.unece.org/pxweb/DATABASE/STAT/Timber.stat.asp (source data).
For further information, please contact,
Mr. Roman Michalak ([email protected]) or
Ms. Marion Briens ([email protected])
UNECE Trade Division
Ref: ECE/TIM/10/P02