24 May 2016: An international expert workshop produced a six-point plan to strengthen collaboration on the use of criteria and indicators to guide and track progress towards sustainable forest management, calling for joint work on a set of global forest indicators and for better integration of criteria and indicators into policy and planning.

Held from 1-3 May 2016, in Ottawa, Canada, the meeting was organized by Natural Resources Canada in cooperation with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) and aimed to mobilize the full potential of criteria and indicators to promote, implement and demonstrate improved sustainable forest management in policy and practice. Experts called for the forest community to agree on a set of forest-related indicators that would demonstrate key contributions of forests to a range of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), noting that there is scope for using criteria and indicators to achieve the SDGs, the Paris climate agreement and the Global Objectives on Forests of the UN Forest Instrument. They also highlighted the need to address the lack of data on the contribution of forests to key areas covered by the SDGs and other global forest-related policy objectives, such as poverty eradication, livelihoods, health and energy.

The six priority areas for concrete action identified by the experts include: joint work towards a core set of global forest indicators; better integration of criteria and indicators into policy and planning; reporting on global commitments; sharing knowledge and building capacity; analyzing commonalities and differences among processes on criteria and indicators; and analyzing the evolution of sustainable forest management indicator processes and lessons learned. [Workshop Webpage] [FAO Press Release] [FAO Webpage on Criteria and Indicators]

Guardar