The Global Forest Resources Assessment relies on information provided by the individual countries. FAO has established a framework for national reporting and conducts training and provides guidance to the national correspondents where needed in order to ensure that the information provided is complete and, as far as possible, compatible with the specifications of the national reporting tables.
National Correspondents are requested to submit their Country Reports as FRA Working Papers1 following a standardized format in order to facilitate their preparation and publication. A preformatted FRA Working Paper template to be used for the reporting is included in the documentation provided to the National Correspondents
The Country Reports should be submitted to FAO (preferably by e-mail or on diskette/CD-ROM) before the end of the year 2004. The FRA team will review the report and ask for clarifications and amendments if needed. Once the review is completed, countries will be asked for an official validation before publishing. This means that FAO does not require National Correspondents to obtain official approval before submitting the draft report. Country Reports should be written in either English, French or Spanish.
The country report will be divided into two separate parts:
• Standard country reporting. This report should be completed by all countries and follows a set of pre-defined reporting tables. It is of utmost importance to closely follow the specifications and guidelines provided by FAO as this will secure that data are as consistent as possible and follow a standard set of definitions, making it possible to compile information at regional and global level.
• Complementary country reporting by thematic areas. This is a voluntary report containing additional information considered important by individual countries, structured according to seven common thematic areas identified by the on-going regional and eco-regional processes on criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management.
The figure below presents the three main phases of the country reporting process and planned target dates. The country reporting process started with a design phase for developing, testing and evaluating the specifications and methodology for country reporting and data processing. The design phase is followed by a reporting, compilation and analytical phase. The third and final phase is the validation and delivery of national assessment reports.
1 FRA Working Papers is a series of documents elaborated within the FRA programme at FAO. The present document is an example of a FRA Working Paper.
