FAO’s support programme to national forest assessments convened an Expert Consultation (EC) on “Generating knowledge through National Forest Assessments - Towards improved forest, land use and livelihood policies” in Rome from 23 to 30 November 2006.
35 experts from 25 countries participated in the EC on national forest assessments (NFA). The participants represented countries with FAO supported NFAs, research institutions, donor organisations and international expertise in the area of NFA and its links to policy processes.
The overall objective of the EC was to identify strategies on how to better understand the role of NFAs in the process of information and knowledge generation and to strengthen the linkage between forest information procurement and national policy processes. The objective was also to further develop the strategies and methodologies of NFAs and broader assessments, and to identify the role that FAO may play in these processes.
The support to a new more holistic NFA approach started in 2000/2001 with a NFA in Costa Rica and there are now experiences from another four completed NFAs (Guatemala, Philippines, Cameroon, Lebanon), two are just in the process of finalization (Honduras and Bangladesh), three are ongoing (Zambia, Kenya, Congo Brazzaville) and around 15 more countries are in preparation and formulation requesting technical assistance from FAO.
Experiences from the finalized and ongoing studies together with the great interest of many more countries underline the success story of the new, more holistic, NFA approach. The novel elements of the NFAs – in comparison to earlier national forest assessments – have proven to meet the expectations and needs of policy and decision makers from the countries:
- Strong country ownership, with FAO in an advisory role.
- Clear focus on questions that result from ongoing policy processes; that is, the NFA approach is demand-driven and not mission or technique driven.
- Integration of other resources than the traditional forest resource only; in the NFA approach this is typically the tree resource outside the forest. But there is the option to expand the NFA by integrating more resources and more land uses.
- Focus on the uses and users of forestry resources and not only on counting the biophysical resource.
This approach illustrates clearly that a NFA needs actually to be an integral part of national policy processes, not only in the forestry sector, but also in related sectors.
The following are the main conclusions and recommendations of the expert consultation:
- NFAs should be more visibly integrated into national policy processes, in the forestry sector, but also beyond. A closer collaboration between the NFA support programme of FAO and the NFP facility is seen as a clear win-win move. It is expected that this integration facilitates adoption of NFA country ownership.
- NFAs should be country driven and country owned, if to succeed in gaining countries’ acceptance. Direct linkage to global Forest Resources Assessment must be avoided to avoid seeing FAO support not responding to membership needs. However, NFA should be harmonised with the global FRA reporting format chiefly with the internationally accepted forest related terms and definitions.
- NFAs are complex undertakings but sufficiently flexible to integrate the generation of information on resources also other than forest and trees. This requires coordination with related sectors and the development of suitable strategies and methodologies. Such an integrated assessment process is expected to foster inter-sectoral communication and collaboration.
- Networking and capacity building are seen as important pillars in the NFA process.
With respect to networks: focus should be on regional networks, fostering exchange of knowledge, experiences, skills between country-NFA groups, funding opportunities, mechanism for international collaborative effort to NFA. FAO should maintain a facilitating role.
With respect to capacity building: focus should not only be on the traditional technical aspects like inventory design, but also very much on the general role that information plays in decision processes, on policy processes in general and on communication. FAO should facilitate capacity building (for example through its international networks) but also act directly.
- Communication is seen a major component of NFAs. NFAs do not stop when the final report is written. Strategies and formats of communicating the results need to be systematically developed. That could be a generic task of FAO.
- FAO should emphasize the importance of gaining the support of higher politicians and thereby also the importance of lobbying and encourage the different NFA stakeholders to influence the politicians to recognize the high value of NFA information.
- The experiences accumulated in the many NFA studies over the past 6 years should be systematically evaluated and analysed by FAO.
As a result of this analysis, a set of strategy and methodology options should be compiled in “guiding principles for a successful implementation of NFAs”. These guidelines should be reviewed by assessment experts from forestry and other sectors, but also by policy and decision makers; including those who have not yet participated in a NFA process.
- FAO should continue playing the role of facilitator. FAO’s function should be strictly catalytic. NFAs should not be perceived as FAO projects, although in some cases seed funding and intensive technical advisory may be needed.
- Countries should invest in NFAs and long term monitoring. NFAs should be institutionalised and be stable structure within national forestry administration.
- Donors are called to rally FAO efforts in knowledge generation for improved forest, land use and livelihood policies and ultimately sustainable forest management.
- FAO should disseminate the progress made by the NFA programme and the results achieved and convene a donor meeting to define a global strategy for knowledge generation and support to national policies as set in the IPF 1997 Proposals for Action.