FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION
OF THE UNITED NATIONS

Sub-regional Office
for Central and Eastern Europe (SEUR)

Recently CEPF’s forest policy activities have focused among others on CEEC related issues with special emphasis on the SEE sub-region. During course of these activities, a project got developed targeting the non-state forestry sector in Albania, Macedonia and Serbia with financial support of the World Bank PROFOR Programme. Its general aim is to further the forest policy activities on non-state forestry in the SEE sub-region. Within its activities an international conference is foreseen to be held 26-28 of May 2009 in Fruska Gora /Belgrade. The conference is jointly organised by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management of Serbia, FAO and CEPF. The partners set up for the above mentioned conference the specific objective to address at the sub-regional scale solution options for the problems identified so far within the frame of the NFP processes in the target countries and further, to gather some political attention for this endeavour. By doing so, issues of livelihood generation, better governance and the role of private forest owner associations in policy making will also be discussed. The programme will also include a one day field excursion to demonstrate some of the dealt issues in the praxis of the host country. Indeed, this conference is a follow up event to not only the 2008 joint World Bank, CEPF, FAO conference held in Skopje/FYRM but also to the activities carried out in the sub-region in cooperation of FAO, IUCN and CEPF since 2004. Therefore it has for the sub-region and the CEE region special importance.