Dear colleagues of SEMARNAT and CONAFOR
Thank you for detailed and constructive comments.
I agree that socio-economic and biodiversity indicators are not well covered, for the reasons you mention.
As regards your detailed comments (ignoring, for the sake of space, those occasions when you provide background or say that further definition of terms is needed):
- #4 Excellent idea to use “designated and/or managed”, as in many cases there is no formal/legal designation
- # 5 I agree with your proposal to include downstream (industry) and forest-related jobs, even though these will be difficult to measure in practice
- #6 Good idea to add legal frameworks. Possibly also institutions
- #10 Important to mention national but “independently verified” certification schemes
- #14 you propose to stay with the traditional breakdown of disturbances (fire, biotic, abiotic), as measured in previous FRAs. This is probably the most robust solution, although it does not address the question of how much disturbance is part of normal ecosystem processes and how much is “damage”. This will vary strongly by ecosystem and whether the forest in question is managed or not, and how.
- #15 you suggest dropping this because of the problems of definition. But is this politically possible given that global forest target 1.3 includes a commitment to “restore degraded forests”?
- #16 You suggest an alternative indicator Number of people in [extreme] poverty living in forest areas, which reflects global forest target 2.1 (Extreme poverty for all forest dependent people is eradicated). Extreme poverty is defined as living under $1.25/day. You rightly point out the difficulty of interpreting the numbers which will emerge when you point out that decreasing numbers might not be the result of successful policies but rather due to migration of people to areas outside forests. I have a lot of sympathy with this approach.
- #17 you suggest focusing only on public financing of SFM. However, global forest target 4.2 refers to “Forest-related financing from all sources at all levels, including public (national, bilateral, multilateral and triangular), private and philanthropic financing”, which sets an ambitious target. In fact, private financing, notably by forest owners themselves, is probably the major source of SFM financing, at least in those countries with significant private forest ownership.
- #18 The debate is open as to whether to include wood energy or not (see other posts)
Thank you
Kit Prins
Facilitator
M. Christopher Prins