Year of publication 2011

Identifying and assessing the condition of forests is not easy – particularly since people have widely different views of what constitutes degradation. For some, any forest management activity may cause degradation. For others forest is only degraded when it can no longer deliver needed goods and services. There is no globally agreed definition of forest degradation which makes the discussion more complex. FAO, together with members of the Collaborative Partnership have taken a number of steps to tackle this problem. Results of this work are summarized in a series of working papers that can be found at http://www.fao.org/forestry/fra/2560/en/ This document pulls together a range of views and approaches to the assessment of forest degradation. It should be regarded as precursor to the development of comprehensive, globally applicable guidelines for assessing forest degradation. There is much work yet to be done on this important topic – we trust the present paper contributes to the goal of reducing and mitigating the inevitable processes of forest degradation.