The Guatemalan pilot assessment was done based on national data provided by the Instituto Nacional de Bosque (INAB), the Consejo Nacional de Areas Protegidas (CONAP) which are the main institutions that have the responsibility of forest management in the country. This document is not the official report of Guatemala to the Global Forest Resources Assessment but may be used as an input for the FRA reporting process.
This working paper presents country report of Guatemala as a part of input to global Forest Resource Assessment (FRA) process of FAO especially to FRA 2005, an update to FRA 2000 (FAO, 2001). It contains complete information on all the sixteen global reporting tables and brief information on the six thematic areas following “Guidelines for Country Reporting” (FRA Working Paper No. 71a).
Global Forest resources Assessments have been carried out by FAO since 1948 that is practically since FAO was created. The mandate for such assessments stems both from the basic statues of FAO (FAO 2003a), and to specific guidance given by member countries, most significantly at sessions of the Committee on Forestry “COFO” (FAO 2003a).
The Kotka IV expert consultation in July 2002 (FAO 2003b) defined the scope and approach of future FRAs and recommended that they should be structured along the framework of “Criteria” common to the nine regional processes on Criteria and Indicators (C&I) for Sustainable Forest Management (SFM). This recommendation has been reinforced by the international conference on C&I for SFM in February 2003 (CICI, 2003) and COFO 2003 (FAO 2003b). This development represents a strong move to establish linkages between politically defined C&I and technically specified FRA. This helps to define the objective of the global FRA more clearly to make it possible to review sustainability of forests at the global level.
The objective for the country reporting in FRA 2005 are three fold. First is to produce by 2005 a comprehensive update and refinement of FRA 2000, structured around the core set of global variables and the six common thematic areas (criteria) for sustainable forest management focussing on the trend information. The second is to involve national institutions, experts and other stakeholders in the collection, analyses and validation of national information to secure national ownership of results. The third is to report all information transparently and with complete documentation and analyses of the source data.
Accordingly, this country report follows the format of a working paper as suggested by FAO in its “Guidelines for Country Reporting”(FRA Working Paper 71a) and has following two distinct elements and associated reporting steps.
Table 2: Two Steps in Country Reporting
Reporting step |
Contents |
1. National data for Global tables |
National Reporting Tables containing national data, transformation of national data to global data tables, preferably electronic, containing source references, source data, and reclassifications leading into estimates for the country for each global table. |
2. Country report by Thematic Areas |
Short report following a predefined outline that builds on the defined Thematic Areas (Criteria) of SFM. The report shall contain additional information relevant in the country for each Theme. |
Forest information data of Guatemala is based on national forest maps developed since 1992 using satellites images of 1988. This information has been used by national authorities as base line of forest information at the national level. The forest map has been updated in 1996 and a new forest map was developed in 1999. National forest definitions are compatible with FRA definitions, and the method used in 1992 map and 1999 are compatible. Further research and estimation was done in the year 2000 which provides more details of forest cover in the country.
Specific forest inventories were developed in several regions of the country, specially Peten, where the higher percentage of forest cover is presented. In most of the cases the forest inventories were done for commercial purposes. Since the year 2002 national authorities, universities and NGO’s, with the support of FAO, are developing a national forest inventories. The methodology used on pilot assessment of national forest and tree resources, includes their management and uses of forest resources. The pilot assessment has a duration of about one year and generates new information at the national level. The hypothesis is that a moderate investment in systematic forest and forestry information has a great immediate value for many countries. The pilot assessment also prepares for decisions related to longer term monitoring of the national forest resources.
Field sampling of the national forest information has been completed. Information contains forest cover, forest owner, users, and use of forest resources. Final data will be available by the end of the year 2003.
INAB also provides statistic information through the year forest information bulletins published at the INAB web page. This information was used for the compilation of other tables as reported.
