Dear Jingpin Lei,
Thank you for your detailed and constructive comments.
I fully agree that it is very challenging to devise indicator sets to suit very diverse conditions. As a consequence, a global core set, which must address global commitments made in a variety of high level fora, is bound to lack specific detail, and needs to be complemented by other indicators valid for particular regions, countries or ecosystems. The aim is to provide information in a form which can be used in the global policy dialogue – not only by forest sector experts and policy makers, but also by policy makers for other sectors and for sustainable development as a whole. This objective should be borne in mind when making the tradeoffs which are inevitable in agreeing a global core set.
As regards your specific comments (separate post), you agree with several other commentators on the challenge of defining “degraded” and the concepts underlying “% disturbed”. You also agree with others that recovery rates for paper and wod are outside the scope of SFM, and on the challenges of employment data. On carbon stocks and flows, you are right that colecting data is difficult and expensive. However, the UNFCCC has developed detailed guidelines on GHG accounting, which have been widely used by signatories of the Kyoto Protocol. The point here is that forest inventory people should work closely together with those responsible for GHG accounting, to achieve useful results (even if there are sometimes tensions between the two approaches) .
Thanks again
Kit Prins
Facilitator
Г-н Christopher Prins