19 January: The Timber and Forestry programme of the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have released a new web-based resource tool to enable researchers, policymakers, practitioners and the general public to access data on Europe’s forests. The database includes information on the balance of carbon in forest ecosystems, forest health condition, status of forest biodiversity, aspects of production, protected forest areas, as well as social and economic aspects of the forestry sector.

The database is a comprehensive research tool based on the State of Europe’s Forests 2007 report, and includes information collected by hundreds of individuals and dozens of agencies. It makes information available for 27 quantitative indicators, structured by six criteria for sustainable forest management endorsed by the Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe.
In line with the structure of criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management, the data illustrate trends of chosen variables for the years 1990, 2000 and 2005. It is expected that this series will be continued. The interface enables online review and simple analysis, but also allows selective extraction of the requested data in different formats. [Indicators Database] [UNECE Press Release]