FAO's field activities
Over the past 20 years, FAO has produced more than 100 reports on forest fires through the implementation of more than 60 field projects in some 40 countries, supported by the FAO Technical Cooperation Programme, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and a number of bilateral donors. In the past ten years case studies on forest fire management have been prepared under several major field projects, for China, Cuba, Cyprus, Ethiopia, Honduras, India, Indonesia, the Lao People's Democratic Republic, Mongolia, Sierra Leone and Turkey. FAO has field projects in a number of countries including Croatia, Morocco, Nicaragua and the Syrian Arab Republic, and others are in the pipeline.
In these projects, the need for participatory approaches to forest management is stressed, including the involvement of local people in the planning and execution of programmes; in the prevention, detection and control of wildfires; and in the sound management of the use of fire as a tool in planned land clearing and in the management of grazing lands. Each project has a strong country capacity-building component.