Dear Mr. Mwanje
Thank you for your thoughtful and constructive contribution, and especially for generating an alternative set of indicators.
However, there may be a misunderstanding, due to my failure to explain fully the context of this Global Core Set of Forest-related Indicators, which are based on the experience of regional and national sets of criteria and indicators, and took them all into account, after carrying out interviews with many major players. The Global Core Set does not aim to start from a blank sheet and first principles, as that is no longer possible, after the lengthy negotiations and compromises which have taken place, inside the forest sector and outside it. We did in fact start with the seven thematic elements which you list, but these have now been relegated in importance by high level policy commitments, notably the UN Strategic Plan for Forests and its Global Forest Goals and Targets, along with the Agenda 2030 and the SDG targets, some of which refer to forests, and the Aichi biodiversity targets. These state, at a high policy level, what are the targets, and therefore what should be monitored. The Global Core Set aims to synthesize, on the basis of these approved targets, and the forest sector’s experience with criteria and indicators, what should be measured, to enable coordinated reporting, and indicate clearly to those responsible for data collection where the priorities should be. The list as it stands is organised by the colour codes used in the process (maintain/further work/delete), which has unfortunately concealed its inner structure. I hope this can be remedied before the core set is finalised. So the draft Global Core Set may not be theoretically sound, but it reflects the state of play in the global forest dialogue as of 2017.
I do not understand your reference to not reducing the reporting burden: data on all the indicators you mention (5, 8, 12 and 15) are easily available of good quality through the FRA. (Others do of course present considerable reporting challenges).
Indicator 14. It is true that the first half is a criterion, but the second half (“% of forest area disturbed”) is a proper indicator. Thank you for pointing this out: I think it can be fixed.
The overlap between 17 and 11 arose because the global dialogue at first focused on ODA (11) and then widened to “resources from all sources” (17). At present data on ODA are more easily available and better structured, and so easier to handle. However, I agree that there is a lot of overlap and we should try to combine them, bringing together data of different quality and different sources to generate a broader picture.
I do not have the possibility to comment on every one of your very coherent indicator set, which follows the “classical” structure of many regional indicator sets. I would make a few comments:
- It appears to be only concerned with the forest sector and not open to cross sectoral issues such as livelihoods of forest dependent people.
- Some of the indicators would be difficult to quantify and aggregate (“structure and staffing”, “existence and implementation of procedures”), although the importance of these aspects is undeniable.
- There seems to be an implicit assumption that forests can be classified as production, protection, or biodiversity forests, whereas in practice, there are multiple functions and complex, sometimes mutually incompatible, management objectives. Successive FRAs have encountered problems when they tried to break forest down by management objective.
- “Equitable sharing of the costs and benefits” is an important concept and mentioned both in the SDGs and the Aichi Targets (in the context of genetic resources only). However, I am not sure how this could be monitored in an objective and comparable way without much preliminary discussion.
Thank you once again for your contribution
Kit Prins
Facilitator
Mr. Christopher Prins