From the above discussions in the working groups and in the plenary, a number of key findings can be extracted which are in part suggestions for a long term strategy and in part recommendations for short-term actions:
Discussion points and major findings:
The NFA is recognised as the prerequisite to national as well as to global policies and to national forestry programming. The expert consultation recognises the instrumental effort of FAO in improving awareness in the countries about the need for NFA1 and the important role of the resulting information in policy developments.
It is one of the cross-cutting issues, addressed in various of the further discussion points below, that a NFA must not be implemented nor perceived in the country as an isolated exercise.
During the Expert Consultation, two presentations on the National Forest Programme (NFP) Facility were given. The close relation between NFPs and NFAs became evident: while the NFPs is supporting a long term forest policy development through communication, networking and workshop organization, the NFAs are continuously providing relevant information as input for national forest policy development and evaluation.
While NFAs have strong technical components (field inventory, remote sensing image analysis and data analysis) they need to develop and improve upon their strategy to assure that information becomes knowledge and that it is used in policy development processes in forestry and related fields, which is the role of NFPs, why it is recommended to develop stronger links between NFAs and NFPs.
Stronger linkages between NFAs and NFPs will provide several advantages for both processes, creating an excellent example of a win-win situation. Among the advantages are:
- NFPs are usually well embedded in the country within the institutional landscape of policy development. NFAs that integrate organically into this system and that derive its mission, also from the demands expressed by both these institutions and the NFP, are likely to achieve more rapidly acceptance, country ownership and policy adoption.
- Inter-sectoral promotion: NFAs with the potential to expand to an information gathering tool also for other sectors depend on the cooperation with and the acceptance by the relevant actors in these sectors. It is likely that the NFPs will be very efficient in supporting NFAs in the identification of information needs of related institutions and in facilitating contacts to the corresponding key people.
- Point in time: information is not demanded at all times with the same urgency. It is expected that the policy analysis by the NFPs helps to more clearly recognize and define the point in time when the NFA is due.
- The NFPs may play a major role in assisting to formulate the “right questions” which can be responded to by NFAs.
Recommendations:
It is recommended to integrate NFAs into ongoing national policy processes. It may even become one element of the NFP. Synergies and mutual benefits are expected to be high.
It is recommended that countries should work to organically integrate NFA into the structure of the forestry services and make it permanent activity with stable specialised and well trained staff and continuous funding.
Discussion points and major findings:
NFAs with a holistic approach to generate information on forest and tree resources, their uses and users, are attractive also for other sectors, as forests and trees are renewable resources that play a highly relevant role for people in all areas.
The NFAs as they are currently promoted by FAO are actually yet integrated assessments in themselves as they focus not only on the tree resource on forest lands (which is the traditional and restricted focus of traditional forest inventories), but they have also included from the very beginning:
- collection of information on tree resources outside forests (TOF): that implies integrating all types of land uses (where trees are found), and
- collection of information on the use and management of forest and trees: that is, socio-economic aspects of forest and tree utilization and management have been integrated into the inventory of the biophysical resource.
Wherever it is the demand and expectation of a country to integrate more resources than forest into the assessment, the feasibility of this demand needs to be analysed, at the best through a SWOT analysis. Natural resources that are in some manner related to trees or forested landscapes can often be straightforwardly integrated into an expanded NFA, such as a livestock and household survey of households which have forest and livestock at the same time. However, other resources may be more difficult to integrate. It must then be decided, on a case by case basis, whether an expansion of the NFA towards an ILUA is efficient or whether other approaches need to be developed.
On one hand the integration of more specialized “target objects” (such as soil variables, biodiversity variables other woody plant species, …) may require more expertise to be integrated into the assessment. On the other hand the support from many sectors would facilitate the funding of the expanded assessment.
It is actually recommended to think twice whether it is beneficial and reasonable to eliminate the term “forest” from the name of the assignment, as it may cause identification problems and inefficient discussions about who is going to take the lead and responsibility. At the end, what has been named ILUA develops by expansion of the NFA approach in terms of methodology and subject-matter orientation.
Recommendations:
It is recommended to derive the need for the type of assessment strictly from the national policy processes and discussions. An assessment focused on forest and tree resources (NFA) may be indicated in many cases, while in other cases additional resources and land uses need to be added and integrated.
In every case, it must be analysed whether integration is feasible and reasonable. This requires a prior evaluation of the compatibility of objectives and of the possibility to integrate and to harmonize the assessment methodology.
FAO may play an advisory role in these preparatory studies.
Discussion points and major findings:
National Forest Assessments are complex tasks. Their planning, implementation, analysis and promotion require a broad range of expertise in the national NFA group. This expertise needs to be systematically built, promoted and maintained. Sharing knowledge, experiences and technical skills is a key issue in this capacity building process.
While universities have the task to build this capacity in the education of young professionals, FAO has a crucial facilitating role in this process when it comes to further educate established professionals and facilitate knowledge sharing between countries. National, regional and international networks have been discussed and evaluated. All are definitively required to promote the NFA process.
Within the country, a network of experts and interested parties within the forestry sector and across to other sectors is required to reasonably focus, plan and implement the assessment. The distribution of work efforts within the assessment will be facilitated by such national networks.
International networks are of particular relevance for the strategic support planning through FAO. They facilitate contacts to international experts and are seen as an important element of NFA promotion. The Regional networks are of special importance because they serve as exchange platform between countries that are implementing or have implemented their NFAs. These networks will be of particular importance to get the NFAs smoothly running and to make them a long term undertaking. FAO is an important facilitator of international networking. This current expert consultation is evidence that this network is yet in place. While it is expected that regional networks will establish themselves without external facilitation, FAO may wish to more systematically support this process.
Recommendations:
FAO should facilitate and actively promote networking. Networks on regional level are seen particularly important, because regional contacts and exchange helps most efficiently supporting NFAs and the corresponding national capacity building.
Discussion points and major findings:
The need to have more tangible criteria to scientifically prove the benefit of a large area integrated forest assessment has been expressed. In a common economic cost-benefit analysis it is straightforward to quantify the cost of an assessment, but the whole range of direct and indirect benefits is difficult assess and in particular difficult to quantify in monetary terms.
Despite of these problems, on the long run, however, it is important to clearly name the uses and benefits of the information provided by NFAs. These include:
o improved decisions on the legislation towards a sustainable utilization and management of forest and tree resources, including recreational uses, water protection, landscape scenic beauty, non-wood forest products, etc.;
o improved investment decisions for plantations and wood based industries;
o improved decisions on the declaration of conservation areas;
o improved decisions on programs to support the sustainable management of the forest resource or programs to support the establishment of tree plantations;
o fostering a public discussion about the state and development of forests, the country’s natural resources, the environment; including giving evidence of the role that the country’s natural resource play in international discussions, for example the climate change discussion;
o disproving myths about the state of the natural resource; some of these myths play a considerable role in public discussions and have an indirect impact on policy decisions: hard facts as provided by NFAs support a subject-matter oriented discussion;
o …
Recommendations:
NFAs should not be seen exclusively under an economic cost-benefit view because the corresponding instruments to measure benefit are not in place.
However, the benefits should be systematically tracked and made visible, which should be an integral follow-up of any NFA inventory and analysis work.
FAO, in cooperation with research institutions, should take the lead to develop instruments to evaluate the benefit of NFA and the produced information in the context of national policy processes – but also in any other context where the information is being used.
Discussion points and major findings:
NFA generates wide range of valuable information on the socio-economic and environmental benefits. In the context of the cost-benefit approach to justifying NFAs in economic terms, information on forest and natural resources should be seen as a public good: in the same manner as the general public in a country has a right to be informed on a regular basis by its government regarding the state of the national finances, the public should also have the right to be informed about the state of the natural resources which are recognized a major national asset directly important for the livelihoods of many and indirectly important for all (through the long list of environmental functions that forests have).
Recommendations:
It is recommended that information generated by NFAs is made public by the countries to maximise the benefits.
By making information public, the number of users increase and the feedback on the methods, techniques, scope and quality of information will lead to improved NFAs.
Discussion points and major findings:
In order to fully understand what impact national level information on forest and tree resource has on national and sub-national policies (in whatever sector!), focused follow-up studies are necessary.
It is recommended to develop a procedure on how to disseminate the NFA information to decision makers, directly or indirectly, and to evaluate the “flow of the information and knowledge” provided by NFAs.
It must be clear, above all to the forest inventory planners, that the assessment exercise does not end when the report is written and distributed. It is equally important to evaluate the use of the information and its impact on policy development.
Such follow-up studies require a generic cross-disciplinary approach, which hardly can be carried out by forest inventory specialists alone. Close collaboration with specialists in policy and communication analysis is essential.
Judged from the status of FAO supported NFAs, such studies can immediately be carried out to follow-up on NFAs in severasl countries; for example in Central America, where one NFA had been finished about 5 years ago (Costa Rica), one has been finished two years ago (Guatemala), one is just about being finished (Honduras) and one is likely to start soon (Nicaragua).
Recommendations:
This is in close relationship to discussion point 4: Follow-up studies that evaluate the impact of NFAs should be part of every NFA.
Existing NFA structure in the country should evaluate the use and impact of the information at the national level. Closer collaboration between NFPs and NFAs will be helpful in this respect.
Discussion points and major findings:
Country ownership of the national assessment project has been emphasized to be key to long-term success. It is not only the basis for successful technical implementation but also for the adoption of the results. The lack of country ownership has been identified as one of the major reasons for the lack of sustainability of the many forest inventory projects carried out in various developing countries in the 1960s and 1970s.
In the ideal case, the NFA becomes a completely national undertaking with national goals, national experts and national funding; being independent in principle from major external input. The role of FAO and regional and international networks would be focused on advising “on demand”. However, the situation in the countries is very different, and in some cases it is a long way to achieve total country responsibility for the NFA process.
Two major issues can be mentioned in this context:
- Priority: If the national government does not assign adequate and sufficiently high priority to the generation of information on the national forest resource (which obviously includes the willingness to assign a budget to the activities and institutionalise the assignment), then country expertise will have a hard time to practically execute the country ownership, to implement the activities and to eventually give evidence of its short- and long-term benefits.
- Expertise: adoption and national promotion of a NFA may also be hampered by insufficient national know-how on large area forest assessments.
In both cases, inadequate prioritization and lack of expertise, FAO may have a supporting role:
- It is contended that country ownership will be achieved best if the NFA is not perceived as an isolated and stand-alone exercise by the country stakeholders, but rather as integrated into at least one already ongoing country process. The NFP is but one example where the NFA would seem to fit perfectly (see above). Whether this leads to higher priority of the NFA in the policy agenda, remains open, but it certainly helps identifying a suitable point in time to start NFA undertakings.
- The expertise on national forest assessments may be enhanced through advising and training activities or by facilitating closer contacts to experts from neighbouring countries. A big step has been taken by FAO in creating a web-based knowledge reference for national forest assessments (www.fao.org/forestry/site/fra-knowledgeref/en)
FAO should develop strategies to support national counterparts in the institutionalisation of NFAs. While it is acknowledged that these strategies are different from country to country and also vary within the countries it is essential to give recommendations on available alternatives to pursue an institutionalization and maybe also which pitfalls to avoid. One element of such a recommendation could be a direct support by FAO on ministerial level.
It should also be considered to build in milestones to be able to evaluate the process accordingly and to build in an “emergency exit” as a way out when it is recognized during the process that it is not suited to immediately proceed with a full blown National Forest Assessment. Strategies should also be developed to prepare the grounds for a later assignments. Elements of this strategy could be training activities, national experts visiting NFAs of neighbouring countries, workshops with decision makers presenting results of NFAs and their adoption in policy processes in other regions.
It is expected, however, that, If the NFA from the beginning is integrated into ongoing policy development processes, such as the NFP, it is expected that this emergency exit hardly ever is needed.
Recommendations:
True country ownership of the NFA process is crucial for in particular for the long term sustainability of the NFAs. Country ownership can only be achieved if the benefit of the NFA is clearly understood and visible. To achieve commitment, NFAs need to be integrated into national policy processes. This is a requirement that probably is new for many technical forest inventory experts and it is therefore recommended that FAO develops basic strategies to guide the national NFA teams on how to achieve general acceptance of the NFA process and thereby gaining political commitment at high level to get the NFA process institutionalised.
NFAs should be policy oriented, country driven and country owned to succeed in gaining countries’ acceptance. Direct linkage to global FRA must be avoided, otherwise FAO support could be seen as not responding to membership needs. However, NFA should be adapted to the global FRA reporting format and the internationally agreed forest related terms and definitions.
Discussion points and major findings:
The value of national level information will be mostly appreciated by those who have a generic interest and at the same time an education background to fully understand thais kind of information.
Expertise on and understanding of National Forest Assessments is also seen as a precondition for the NFA process to be adopted into country ownership and for the acceptance of the results into the policy and decision making processes.
While economists on a default basis deal with national data and national indices, in most forestry curricula (not only in developing countries), forest inventories are often restricted to small area studies like forest management inventories, which are focusing at the more technical aspects of planning, implementation and analysis.
This is recognized as one major reason why the role of national level forest resource data is not fully understood and appreciated, not even by some forestry experts, and also why frequently it is believed that national forest assessments provide data that is also immediately applicable for small area forest management; a misunderstanding that easily leads to frustration and under-appreciation of the NFA products.
It should be one of the tasks of the NFA country experts to get young professionals interested in this field and also to influence colleagues at the universities and technical forestry schools to put national forest assessments on the agenda of the curricula of the forest inventory courses, and above all, also onto the agenda of forest and environmental policy courses.
Recommendations:
National, regional and international networks should be used to foster exchange of experiences and knowledge.
Countries should include national forest assessments in the forest inventory courses and introduce new concepts of integrated, holistic, multidisciplinary, rapid, low-cost and policy oriented forest assessment approach in forestry education.
FAO should play a role as facilitator but also offer specific training courses related to the NFA process. Capacity building must not only cover the traditional forest inventory topics but should also focus very much on policy integration and on the role of information in the context of decision making. Also, communication strategies should be on the agenda of capacity building. Any capacity building should have instructors from countries where NFAs had been successfully implemented. It is their experience in how to handle all the challenges that is particularly useful for new NFA teams.
Discussion points and major findings:
It became clear in Working Group 2 that NFAs are developing towards very complex projects in itself, and even more when they expand to integrate more land uses and resources than forests and trees.
It is hardly possible to design a NFA to respond to any possible situation of biophysical, socio-economic and political conditions. Many elements of the methodology were identified and discussed that refer to planning, implementation and dissemination of NFA findings.
Six NFAs with the new holistic approach have been completed so far with the technical support of FAO (Costa Rica, Guatemala, Cameroon, Lebanon, The Philippines, Honduras). Four NFAs are ongoing (Zambia, Kenya, Congo Brazzaville, Bangladesh) and FAO support to NFAs in another 22 countries2 have been formulated and are awaiting for funding to be implemented.
NFAs with a holistic approach have been clear success stories, which have strengthened national capacities and institutions and further assisted the governments in placing their forest policy on firmer grounds and have also lead to improved public awareness of the state and development of the forestry resources.
The listed set of countries exhibits a wide range of biophysical conditions, forest types, and land uses, a wide range of organizational structures in the forestry administration, a wide range of immediate information demands as expressed by the governments, a wide range of availability of experts in natural resource assessments and exhibits also some variability in what refers to the readiness and willingness to adopt country ownership of the assignment including putting in own funds.
The expert consultation concluded that FAO, by fostering and supporting the NFA activities, has gathered such a wealth of experiences that it is now a due time to engage in an intermediate analysis/evaluation of these experiences, which are the country specific experiences and the experiences within the NFA Support Unit at FAO.
The expected outcomes of this analysis are:
- a consolidated strategy on how to integrate NFAs into national processes (see above), possibly taking into account specific differences between regions;
- A consolidated set of recommendations on methodological aspects, maybe as a “Guidelines to NFAs” or “Principles of NFAs” or “To-do´s and not-to-do´s in NFAs”.
This analysis is ideally carried out by an inter-disciplinary team, also including experts that have not been involved in the process. Such analysis can obviously not be achieved in a 2 days expert consultation, but requires considerably time.
Recommendations:
NFAs are complex undertakings. A general methodology can hardly be recommended, while a general approach could be followed with necessary adaptation to meet specific country needs. Many methodological and strategic elements need to be considered, as concluded by Working Group 2.
FAO should engage in a comprehensive analysis and evaluation of experiences made so far and compile a list of “guiding principles for NFAs”. This should not only include the technical methodology like sampling design etc. but also principles on how to integrate other resources3 in a NFA, principles on how to establish a NFA organizational unit within a country’s forestry directorate or corresponding ministry.
Discussion points and major findings:
Forest inventories are largely perceived as technical exercises of data collection where the major skills required are in the field of statistical sampling. However, it must be recognized and made clear in any NFA assignment, that these technical components, while important beyond doubt, are only one part of the exercise.
Many more skills are required and this does also refer to organization and communication. The institutionalization of the NFA as a long-term or even permanent undertaking is one of the major organizational challenges: it is important to always work towards the goal of making the NFA more than just a one-shot inventory.
The due preparation and dissemination of the results and findings is one of the major communication challenges: it is important to recognize that the NFA does not end when the data are analysed and the report is written. The promotion and dissemination of the findings is an integral part of the exercise.
Several discussion points have stressed that strategies for communicating the NFA process and the results must be systematically developed.
Recommendations:
FAO should assist the country experts in developing efficient strategies in the fields of organization and communication. The collaboration with the NFP facility is expected to be very helpful in these contexts.
These communication strategies may be further issues in the “guiding principles for NFAs” study recommended in discussion point 9.
Discussion points and major findings:
The FAO supported NFAs have a holistic approach and are integrated assignments which do not exclusively focus on the traditional “taking stock of the resource”. The possibility to expand toward neighbouring sectors by integrating resources, that are not directly related to forests and trees, offers the unique possibility to build bridges between sectors and to make the interdependency of the sectors obvious.
Recommendations:
NFA planners in the countries should systematically approach key actors in related sectors and present the principle ideas of NFAs to them.
Thereafter it should be evaluated whether common grounds can be identified and an integration of further land uses / resources into the NFA seem right and are feasible, a process that is best put into place when the NFA is an integral component of the NFP.
Discussion points and major findings:
FAO has taken the lead in developing holistic NFA approaches and has developed a base methodology for data collection that can be adapted to meet the needs in different countries.
- Country ownership of the NFA assignments is claimed to be important for the long-term success and sustainability of NFAs. However, external support is required in many countries, in particular in the starting phase when know-how needs to be transferred. A major role of FAO to support strategy development is the advisory role, that can be implemented by using FAO experts in combination with experts4 from other countries which have already successfully installed NFAs, an approach that already is being successfully pursued and supported by FAO.
- In addition to general strategy development, technical support and advise is usually also required, in particular in the starting phase of a NFA. A document that summarizes the basic principles of a NFA will be helpful in this process.
- FAO, as NFA advisor and with a good overview of upcoming challenges and issues, should also systematically suggest and help formulating scientific projects toward an optimization of all aspects of the NFA process. These scientific projects could then be worked on by university students in countries where NFAs take place or by the NFA staff themselves.
Of course, scholarships and funding needs to be found in a collaborative effort of the country experts and FAO. The global network of NFA experts that includes also university staff from various countries may also play a role in getting these scientific support studies on the way.
Recommendations:
Repeating what has been recommended under earlier discussion points:
FAO should continue their successful facilitating role toward regional and international networking.
FAO should continue promoting capacity building, wherever possible in a facilitating role employing also instructors from “NFA countries” forwarding their experiences and knowledge to new “NFA countries”.
FAO should continue developing and refining strategies and methodologies for NFA implementation (technical) and promotion (policy).
FAO should work with international partners including donors to expand its NFA support to more countries and ensure that NFA and the resources monitoring is a lasting exercise at national and international levels
Discussion points and major findings:
The expert consultation generated a consolidated picture of the current situation and challenges and gave substantial recommendations on how to focus NFAs to anchor them within the countries’ policy processes.
Follow-up actions are recommended. These actions include:
Studies: (possibly in cooperation with a University with students in the respective NFA countries)
- Studies that analyse concrete cases of NFAs: How and for what was the produced information used? Where did the trained experts end up after the assignment? Is the NFA and its results visible as a long term process?
- Studies for concrete cases that analyse the policy and decision processes in the context of forestry and related sectors: which are the related sectors? What are the roles that information can play?
Discussion processes / fora / workshops / meetings: (possibly but not necessarily facilitated by FAO):
- focussed discussions and brainstorming with politicians from forestry and related sectors: identifying the optimal type of assessment and the optimal point in time for its implementation.
- focussed discussions and brainstorming with inventory / census experts in forestry and other fields (agriculture, conservation, aquaculture, tourism, …): identifying the possibilities and limits of integration as a function of common needs of information.
- Focussed discussions and brainstorming with donors on long term national forestry resources assessment strategy.
Recommendations:
The expert consultation confirmed the successful development of FAO supported NFAs. The experiences from the countries are manifold and diverse; the overall utility of sound and solid information as provided by NFAs was clearly stated.
Additional focussed research studies are recommended to be carried out in cooperation with universities. This can actually be seen as part of a long term capacity building.
Methodologies and strategies of
(1) integrating other resources into a NFA;
(2) improved integration of NFAs into national policy processes
(3) establishing a globally agreed aproach to NFA and tools for its implementation
should be further developed. This may be promoted by a follow-up donor meetings / expert consultations with assessment experts also from other sectors and with policy makers that share their expectations toward the NFA process.
1 Proposals for Action, IPF Fifth Session, 1997 called countries and international organizations to collaborate in national capacity building and institutional strengthening for NFAs where data collection is based on integrated, holistic, multidisciplinary, rapid, low-cost and policy oriented approach and methods of quantitative data on the full range of forest goods and services, including impacts of changes in forest use on the environment
2 Brazil, Ecuador, Uruguay, Angola, Uganda, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Chad, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Oman, Syria, Yemen, Vietnam and Kyrgyzstan.
3 Resources related to cropping, livestock, water, wildlife, minino, fishery, etc.
4 FAO is employing NFA experts from Guatemala to support NFA developments in Kenya and Honduras; a NFA expert from The Philippines is employed to support NFA developments in Lebanon and Bangladesh and a NFA expert from Lebanon is employed to support NFA developments in Zambia and Congo.
