The 27th session of the Committee on Forestry (COFO 27) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) broadened the discussion on forests to encompass the need to engage in more cross-sectoral and cross-committee work to ensure forests’ role in meeting the SDGs by tackling climate change, biodiversity loss, land degradation, and water management, and the role it could play in a bioeconomy.
The Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB) summary report of the meeting highlights the pressures forests are experiencing, including from deforestation and forest degradation and from industries such as agriculture and mining, urbanization, consumption, and illegal logging. “At the same time,” ENB notes, “forests play a significant and irreplaceable role in feeding the world’s population, mitigating climate change, reducing the risk of natural disasters, and supplying freshwater, not to mention the benefits of wood products across sectors.” The ENB report outlines countries’ and relevant actors’ increasing understanding of the need to draw on technological, social, policy, institutional, and financial innovations to do “more with less.”
While the meeting convened on the theme, ‘Accelerating Forest Solutions Through Innovation,’ the ENB analysis suggests ‘Spreading the Forest Canopy,’ could also have served as one, “given the positive news that, although we are still losing ten million hectares of forest every year, the rate of deforestation has significantly slowed in many countries, and forest cover is in fact expanding in some areas.”
Delegates endorsed the FAO Forestry Roadmap 2024-2031 that will guide FAO’s forestry work under the FAO Strategic Framework 2022-31. They also approved FAO’s flagship State of the World’s Forests 2024 report (SOFO 24), which underscores why innovation is critical for halting and reversing deforestation.
Delegates also approved recommendations with regard to further implementation of FAO’s work on:
- Urban forestry and its contribution to urban agrifood systems transformation;
- A forest-based bioeconomy;
- Forestry’s contribution to FAO’s work on climate change and integrated water management;
- Scaling up actions on agriculture and forestry linkages; and
- Integrated wildfire management.
COFO 27 convened in hybrid format from 22-26 July 2024. The in-person segment was held at FAO Headquarters in Rome, Italy. [ENB Coverage of COFO 27]
