3 April 2009: The UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) held a one-day workshop on estimating how much wood is available in Europe on a sustainable basis, including for use as biomass for energy. The workshop, held in Geneva, Switzerland, on 30 March 2009, aimed to address gaps in knowledge, including considering socioeconomic and bio-technical constraints to theoretical wood availability when assessing wood supply.

The workshop recommended that countries should carry out and share studies of potential sustainable wood supply, and countries should use the workshop’s good practice principles for studies of potential wood supply, in the interests of international comparability. A revised version of the recent UNECE/FAO study on potential sustainable wood supply will be issued later in 2009. These recommendations, and other workshop conclusions, were endorsed by the 31st Session of the FAO/UNECE Working Party on Forest Economics and Statistics, held on 31 March 2009. [UNECE press release] [ICAO press release]