Appendix 5. Activities and Expenditure Of FAO's Field Programme in Forest Genetic Resources

GENERAL

FAO's works fall into two categories. The Regular Programme (RP) is financed through assessed contributions of FAO's 171 members. It covers the functions of FAO as an international secretariat in forestry, fisheries and agriculture, as a forum for discussion among nations and a source of technical, legal and policy level expertise in these fields (see Appendix 4). Through its Field Programme, FAO provides assistance to governments and helps them in the development and implementation of national and regional strategies aimed at sustainable rural development.

The field programme is based on requests for technical assistance from member countries. The basic principle of FAO's technical development assistance is to support national institutions and to help build national and local capacities in the areas covered by the project. The five main objectives for the FAO Forestry Department apply equally to work at FAO's regular programme and to the forestry field programme. According to the Medium-Term Plan of FAO 1992-1997 they are as follows:

- to assist countries enhance the productivity and sustained use of forest and tree resources, with a view to maximize their contribution to rural and socio-economic development;

- to promote the conservation of forest ecosystems and the integration of forests and trees into land-use systems;

- to assist in increasing the value of forest production - both wood and non-wood;

- to support full participation in and equitable sharing of benefits among all people dependent on forestry activities, particulary the most vulnerable groups;

- to provide policy and planning advice to national forestry administrations.

By the end of 1995, there were 228 on-going and approved forestry field programmes, while the corresponding number for 1995 was 219. The composition of the field programme for the years 1994 and 1995, by the categories of the Programme of Work and Budget, is shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Composition of FAO's Forestry Field Programme by Number of Projects, Expenditures and by Categories of the Programme of Work and Budget

PROGRAMMES AND SUBPROGRAMMES	1994				1995
	No. of projects	%	Expend. 000$	%	No. of projects	%	Budget 000$	%
Forest Resources and Environment	162	71	36 852	64.6	152	69.4	42088	62.3
Forest Products	14	6.1	2321	4.1	9	4.1	3 574	5.3
Forest Institutions, Training	52	22.9	17 694	31.3	58	26.5	21 866	32.4
TOTAL	228	100	56597	100	219	100	67 528	100

Note: A large number of projects are cross-sectoral, i.e. cover several disciplines. In the above classification the projects are categorized according to their main activity.

Table 2. Regional distribution of the forestry field programme by categories of the Programme of Work and Budget

REGION	Forest Resources and Environment		Forest Products		Forest Institutions		TOTAL by region
	No of projects	000 $	No of projects	000 $	No of projects	000 $	No of projects	000 $	% of total expenditure/budget for 94-95
Africa	103	23 561	8	2 892	30	8 775	141	35 228	28
Asia-Pacific	121	30 379	8	2 799	26	7 940	155	41 118	33
Latin America and Caribbean	33	8 621	1	22	41	17 653	75	26 296	21
Near East	47	16 109	6	182	13	5 192	66	21 483	17

Since 1995, the Operations Service of the Forestry Department (FODO), which operated the FAO forestry field projects, has been absorbed in the newly established Technical Cooperation Department. Forestry projects are technically backstopped by the technical divisions in the Forestry Department, i.e. projects in the field of forest genetic resources and biological diversity in forest ecosystems are technically backstopped by the Forest Resources Division.

SIZE AND ACTIVITIES OF FAO's FIELD PROGRAMME IN FOREST GENETIC RESOURCES

An overview of FAO's field programme in forest genetic resources is given in Tables 3 and 4. The tables are based on the "FAO Forestry Department Project Catalogue" of December 1994. Projects included in the tables have main activities in one or more of the following four categories: (i) tree seed procurement; (ii) tree improvement and conservation of forest genetic resources; (iii) nature conservation and nature protection; and (iv) forest management. The judgement and selection of which projects to include in the tables, based on relative importance in them of components in the field of forest genetic resources, has been made by the Secretariat of the present Panel; the tables should thus only be used as a general indicator of the size of the field programme in forest genetic resources.

A total of 61 projects have activities falling in this field (see Table 3). The total external funding, over the whole duration of the projects (which generally ranges from 1 to 5 years) is of some $US 120 million¹⁰ FAO forest genetic resources projects are found in all regions, with a majority of projects in Africa and the Asia/Pacific region in regard to both number of projects and total expenditure.

¹⁰ Note that the national contributions of host governments, which covers local costs, is not included in this figure.

As far as the ecological coverage is concerned, the humid and dry tropics are fairly equally represented. The majority of projects in the dry tropics is located in Africa with only a few projects in dry-zone Asia/Pacific, whereas on the other hand most of the projects in the humid zone are situated in the Asia/Pacific region.

Table 4 lists the forest genetic resources projects divided by region and by main activity. It is interesting to note the importance, in all regions, of projects on in situ conservation and sustainable use of forests, and on ecosystem conservation. Their increase has shown a common trend in recent years, especially in Africa and Latin America. In Asia, the proportion of projects focused on seed procurement and tree breeding is relatively high. In addition to the main activities listed in the table, all projects also include components of support to national institutions, training and dissemination and exchange of information.

Table 3. Regional and Ecological Distribution of FAO Field Projects in the Field of Forest Genetic Resources

REGION	Total no. of projects	Approx. Total expenditure US$ million	Dry tropics expend, in US$ million	Humid tropics expend, in US$ million	Temperate expend, in US$ million
Africa	18	41.1	15 (34.6)	3 (6.5)	0
Asia & Pacific	26	40.9	4* (7.1)	20* (26.1)	4 (7.7)
Latin America & the Caribbean	8	18.4	0	8' (17.4)	1* (1.0)
Near East & Europe	9	18.9	6* (16.5)	0	4* (2.4)
TOTAL	61	119,3	25* (58.2)	31* (50)	9* (11.1)

* Including a Regional project covering more than one ecological zone

Table 4. Number of projects in the regions by main activities

MAIN ACTIVITY	Africa	Asia and Pacific	Latin America and Caribbean	Near East and Europe	TOTAL
Seed collection, production, storage and exchange	7	8	1	4	20
Testing/breeding	6	7	-	2	14
In situ conservation of forest genetic resources and forest management	13	14	7	5	40
Protected areas and ecosystem conservation	5	10	5	4	24