FAO and the UNECE produced ‘Guidelines for the Development of a Criteria and Indicator Set for Sustainable Forest Management for the Caucasus and Central Asia’.
The Guidelines present a step-by-step approach on how to initiate a consultative process to develop a criteria and indicator set.
Countries can use the criteria and indicator sets to monitor progress towards SFM and the SDGs.
23 May 2019: The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) and the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) have released guidelines for national forest monitoring systems. The Guidelines aim to support monitoring, reporting and assessment of progress towards sustainable forest management (SFM) and the SDGs.
FAO and UNECE produced the ‘Guidelines for the Development of a Criteria and Indicator Set for Sustainable Forest Management’ as part of efforts to develop national criteria and indicator sets for Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. The Guidelines present a step-by-step approach on how to initiate a consultative process to develop a criteria and indicator set in a participatory way. The Guidelines share specific concepts, definitions and tools to support the development of national criteria and indicator sets for SFM.
The Guidelines feature a “comprehensive shopping list” of global and regional indicators that countries can use to develop or improve their own national criteria and indicator sets to monitor progress towards SFM and the SDGs. These examples include the Forest Europe process’s pan-European set of criteria and indicators for SFM, which contains 6 criteria and 45 indicators; the Montreal Process’s set of criteria and indicators for the Conservation and Sustainable Management of Temperate and Boreal Forests, which comprises 7 criteria and 54 indicators; the criteria and indicator set for SFM in Low-Forest-Cover-Countries, which contains 7 criteria and 93 indicators; the International Tropical Timber Organization’s (ITTO) criteria and indicator set for the sustainable management of tropical forests, which features 7 criteria, 18 indicator groups and 58 indicators; and the Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA) 2015, which contains 7 themes, 20 thematic questions and 46 indicators.
FAO and UNECE developed the Guidelines under the project, ‘Accountability Systems for Sustainable Forest Management for the Caucasus and Central Asia,’ which is funded by the UN Development Account. The project supports countries in identifying information and tools necessary to implement SFM at the national level, including identification of criteria and indicator sets that are measurable, feasible, practicable and easily communicated. [Publication: Guidelines for the Development of a Criteria and Indicator Set for SFM] [UNECE Publication Webpage] [UNECE Press Release]