UN Forum on Forests opens annual session on sustainable management
The United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) opened its annual session today in Geneva to consider implementing 270 proposals for financing and sharing environmentally sound technologies, as well as drawing up criteria for sustainable forest management.
The United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) opened its annual session today in Geneva to consider implementing 270 proposals for financing and sharing environmentally sound technologies, as well as drawing up criteria for sustainable forest management.
The proposals for action at UNFF's fourth session came from meetings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests (IPF) from 1995 to 1997, and the Intergovernmental Forum on Forests (IFF) from 1997 to 2000, both under the auspices of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD).
The IPF/IFF recommended, in particular, implementation in the areas of social and cultural aspects of forests; traditional and scientific forest-related knowledge; monitoring, assessment and reporting; concepts, terminology and definitions; and criteria and indicators of sustainable forest management.
An ad hoc group of experts met last December in Geneva and expanded the proposals on conceptualization and monitoring to include approaches and mechanisms for monitoring and details of possible financing for the UNFF to discuss.
The 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro developed the Forest Principles after intensive negotiations, and also included material on combating deforestation in the summit's end document, Agenda 21. All these will figure into the UNFF's talks.
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