Dear colleagues,
Please find below a contribution on behalf of the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity.
1. Is the FAO definition on primary forest (FAO, 2018) adequate to your national/regional/global assessment and reporting purposes? If not, what criteria would you like to add/remove from the FAO definition?
The current Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 and the Aichi Biodiversity Targets include Target 5, which reads “By 2020, the rate of loss of all natural habitats, including forests, is at least halved and where feasible brought close to zero, and degradation and fragmentation is significantly reduced”.
“Natural habitats, including forests” includes “forests as natural habitats” among other ecosystems. This wording does not match a specific category of the FRA such that it could be used as an obvious indicator. The ‘naturally regenerated forests’ category of the FRA may encompass forests as natural habitats, but permits a level of disturbance that may be detrimental to some species. The definition of primary forest proposed for the FRA refers to a number of criteria that are characteristic of forests as natural habitats (lack of significant native species loss; lack of disturbance of ecological processes; presence of natural forest dynamics; natural tree species composition; occurrence of dead wood; natural age structure; occurrence of natural regeneration processes), making that category of the FRA very adequate to global assessment and reporting purposes under Aichi Biodiversity Target 5.
This target will likely be replaced in new global biodiversity framework is under discussion, to be adopted at CBD COP 15 in October 2020. The targets proposed under the ‘Zero Draft’ of the new framework are still to be negotiated and will likely incur substantial changes, however they refer to “no net loss”, “retention and restoration”, “integrity”, “intact areas”, “wilderness”. If such targets are adopted, a global indicator of primary forests would be extremely relevant, as an indicator of the integrity of ecosystems, to ensure that the achievement of these targets is not based upon large-scale replacement of primary forests with younger or more modified forests that do no have the same value for biodiversity.
A monitoring framework with indicators is being developed as a supplementary component of the new biodiversity framework, which mentions as a suggested element for the monitoring the “Change, and rate of change, in extent of natural ecosystems and biomes (overall, for each biome/ecosystem type, and for intact areas, e.g. primary forests)”, and as a potential indicator for that element “Trends in primary forest extent”. This relevance hopefully explains the 'why' of wanting to improve data under this variable of the FRA, in response to the comments made by Sonja Onswalt.
As the report points out, the definition of primary forests proposed by the FRA is consistent with how the term is used in the scientific literature. From the standpoint of global assessment and reporting under the CBD, the criteria proposed are a good enough fit for the concept of “forests as natural habitat” under ABT 5. Rather than adding or removing criteria, the focus should be on making sure that they are used consistently by countries when providing figures on primary forests in their FRA reports. Instead of relying on broad tiers of accuracy, the reporting format for this category could include information on which of these criteria have actually been applied in the methodology used to estimate primary forest extent.
The wording of some of the criteria may also need to be reviewed to avoid and/or clarify ambiguous terms. For example “significant species loss” begs the question of what threshold should be used to consider that species loss is significant enough that the criterion cannot be met. Similar to the other thresholds discussed in the report (canopy height, canopy cover), this may need to be defined separately for different forest biomes/realms.
Since implementation of the globally agreed targets currently negotiated through the CBD process happens through national actions, the existence of time series data on primary forest at the national level is also of use to the CBD process. Having this information can help countries set ambitious, yet realistic targets, based on knowledge of previous rates of primary forest loss. The objective of the series of workshops to strenghten the capacity of governments to make use of the most recent and accurate datasets is therefore aligned with the capacity-building efforts of the CBD Secretariat towards the adoption of more specific national targets for ecosystem loss and restoration, including forests.
2. Is the background paper missing any major issues? If yes, please specify.
The paper does a good job of reviewing currently available datasets but seems to fail short of making more concrete recommendations on which of those could be used to specifically address the criteria of the definition. It recommends that a “minimum attribute dataset” be defined to assess primary forest extent but does not list concrete recommendations for data that could be used for that purpose – will this be decided during the workshops?
A summary table would have been useful to present specific datasets/methodologies against each of the criterion of the definition, possibly differentiating between different regions. This could be the expected outcome of the workshops, but it may be more realistic to start them with clearer proposals to use as a basis for the discussion.
The report could also draw further on the review conducted by the Secretariat of the CBD in 2018 of national FRA reports, which highlighted the discrepancies in the methodologies currently used to estimate primary forest extent, and the departure from the criteria listed in the definition. This is relevant background information for example to complement the information in Table 5. It does not make sense to compare the FRA reporting amongst countries and against available global datasets if the criteria they have used to define primary forests are completely different (some countries e.g. Russia look at lack of disturbance while others simply use the area of forest under protected status – which is often not a guarantee of no disturbance!).
This information is also important to assess the reluctance that there may be to adopting new methodologies that could completely contradict previous data and trends reported by a country under this variable.
One point missing from the report, but perhaps for clarification by the FRA team, is also the question of retroactivity of the application of harmonized/improved methodologies – Will a new time series data of primary forest extent be started from FRA 2020 or will data previously submitted be revised? How to ensure consistency not just across countries/regions but also over time in the reporting of this data?
3. Which methodology and data, if any, do you use to assess primary forest area and its changes?
The 5th edition of the Global Biodiversity Outlook relies, among other indicators, on the ‘primary forest’ category of the FRA to assess progress under Aichi Biodiversity Target 5. While the FRA data is used to determine that the target has not been met, the exact reference is actually to the 2015 article by Morales-Hidalgo et al., which extracts figures at regional level from the FRA category on primary forests but also points at the inconsistencies in the application of the methodology and potential issues with the data.
In short, while the limitations of the FRA data on primary forests are well known, there does not seem to be an alternative indicator readily available at the global level. For intergovernmental processes such as the CBD, the value of the FRA resides not only in its global coverage but also in its acceptability to national governments since all the data points have been formally approved.
4. Which methodological changes would be needed to improve reporting on primary forest area and its changes at national, regional and global levels, with particular emphasis on improving consistency among countries?
See response under question 2.
5. How can FAO help countries improve their reporting on primary forest?
FAO could encourage closer coordination FRA national correspondents andCBD Focal points working on their reports to the CBD, to make the most of the potential for synergies between the two reporting processes. Many of the biodiversity indicators used by Parties to the CBD may be of relevance to apply the criteria of the definition of primary forests in the FRA and much of the data collected for one process could be relevant for the other.
We look forward to the outcomes of this consultation and workshop series.
Mr. Blaise Bodin