Forest and climate change programme
©FAO-Giulio Napolitano FAO has ranked climate change in general as one of its priorities. An interdepartmental working group coordinates its work. FAO's programme on forests and climate change seeks to contribute to mitigating climate change by advocating and strengthening the concept of sustainable forest management. Recognizing the crucial roles of forests in climate change, the Forestry Department is devoting increased resources to cover this new facet of forestry. The activities of the programme on forests and climate cover the following main areas.
Integrating climate change concerns into core forestry activities
The programme on forests and climate change provides input to and exploits synergies with most other FAO programmes, both in Forestry and in other departments such as the Legal and Sustainable Development Departments, including the Global Forest Resources Assessment and programmes on wood energy, forest products, economics, agroforestry, community forestry and forest plantations.
The Global Forest Resources Assessment will henceforth include global biomass and carbon data. UNFCCC also requires that parties report periodically on biomass and carbon stock changes in their forests, following methods currently being elaborated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). All international documentation of carbon change in forests relies to a large extent on national forest inventories, which currently are often outdated, rudimentary or unreliable, particularly for developing countries. FAO's recently initiated programme of support to national forest assessments will help improve this information. Moreover, a global data bank on biomass expansion factors is being assembled. To exploit these obvious synergies in international carbon monitoring, ongoing work focuses on common forest data, expansion factors, assessment methods, terminology and funding. These activities also dovetail with efforts by the Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF) to streamline forest-related reporting.
©FAO-Giulio Napolitano Strong links exist between wood energy from forests and trees outside forests and climate change mitigation. Thus woodfuel and forest products data traditionally collected by FAO also have climate-related significance. Work on climate change overlaps with work on trade and marketing of forest products as well. For example, certification of carbon offsets from afforestation under the clean development mechanism (CDM) and forest certification have some overlapping objectives; carbon offset credits and, possibly, carbon in forest products will eventually become novel commodities in forest products trade. FAO's programme on planted forests can contribute a wealth of data and information for negotiations and implementation. Conversely, the climate change mitigation regime will provide new funding and possibly new concepts for planted forests.
Advocating forests in the nascent climate change mitigation regime
FAO supports UNFCCC and its secretariat through document reviews and technical papers, through active participation in expert groups on the CDM and technology transfer, and through side events synchronized with the negotiations. FAO is working closely with IPCC on forest-related definitions and on forest carbon assessment in the IPCC Good Practice Guidance.
Assisting member countries in climate change-related tasks
In cooperation with the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), FAO organized regional workshops in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and Asia to improve the capacity of its developing-country members to participate in negotiations on the CDM. FAO also contributed its experience in harmonizing diverging country information to the European Community's effort to harmonize its members' reporting obligations under UNFCCC. UNEP, IUCN, the International Union of Forestry Research Organizations (IUFRO) and the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) are regular workshop partners.
Now that the Kyoto Protocol has entered into force, a prime goal is to assist member countries in implementing it. Given FAO's focus on rural development, poverty reduction and food security, small-scale forestry projects under the CDM that have the potential to provide immediate benefits to low-income smallholders and rural communities will receive particular attention. Supporting more reliable reporting on forests in National Communications under UNFCCC will be an added priority.