Objectives

Objectives

The long-term objectives of the approach will be to contribute to the sustainable management of forests and TOF by providing decision makers and stakeholders with the best possible, most relevant and cost-effective information for their purpose at local, national and international levels. It aims also at assisting the countries in developing baseline information from a statistically verifiable data on the state of the forestry resources, their uses and management.

Specifically, FAO¿s support to national forest assessments aims at:

• Generating a set of information on a wide range of forest and tree parameters on the basis of a harmonised set of variables and a vegetation classification system and standard forest and tree survey sampling design for continuous monitoring.

• Assessing the state of the resources, the ways they are managed and used and their contribution to food security and poverty alleviation.

• Assisting the countries to build up their national capacities to design, plan and implement national forest inventories and to manage the generated information.

• Promoting multilateral co-operation and international partnerships for global forest and tree resources monitoring