The first development objective of the Global Forest Survey is to improve national capacities for forestry assessments and sustainable forest management. This includes:
- to improve management of forests by providing decision makers and stakeholders with the best possible, most relevant and cost-effective information for their purpose at local and national levels;
- to improve forestry knowledge management by identifying information requirements, link these with international standards and the implementation of the GFS, and by improving the accessibility of information for analyses;
- to support the member countries in establishing continuous forest resources assessment and monitoring systems and in developing their national capacities for the purpose;
- to provide technical assistance to member countries in building national capacities in the areas of methodology development, use of new technologies and establishment of forest monitoring systems;
- to promote multilateral co-operation and international partnerships for conservation, development and management of the global forestry resources for the sustainable use of their components.
The second development objective of the Global Forest Survey is to develop forestry knowledge management in support of international processes. This includes:
- to consolidate and expand the baseline primary information for policy-makers, scientists and the general public on the state, change and utilization of forest resources at global, regional and country levels;
- to provide assessments of variables required by international forestry processes, and establish feedback mechanism to evolve the collection of information and reporting over time;
- to develop a practical approach for the assessment and monitoring of the forestry resources at country and global levels that meets the concurrence of the member countries and donor community;
- to establish, under the leadership of the FAO, partnerships and co-operation linkages with well-established national and international institutions for the carrying out of world wide forest survey in continuous basis.
- to develop an information system forest resources and forestry covering statistical and contextual information;
- to secure a continuous reporting on the progress of the survey, the interim results and the state of the forestry resources at any point of time.
