An FAO programme that helps local communities in Mongolia to protect their own forests is being seen as a model for action in the Asia-Pacific region. The Participatory Forest Management project has effectively stopped illegal logging and forest fires in 15 pilot districts since it began in 2007, and is set to go nationwide when the pilot program ends in January 2012.

In Senegal, the Acacia project has involved the planting and managing of Acacia forests in arid lands helping combat desertification while providing life-changing benefits to local communities. With two thirds of the African continent now classified as desert or drylands and desertification affecting a quarter of the world's population, the breakthrough has the potential to transform the lives of vulnerable populations.

FAO's 2011 State of the World's Forests report, published to coincide with the International Year of Forests, highlights some positive and encouraging trends. Asia and the Near East are showing an increase in forest regeneration and replanting projects. One such project in the Philippines uses an ingenious, low-cost method of forest regeneration that eliminates competition from undesirable species.

How the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Tanzania is helping people cope with climate change. Water management, sustainable land-use, innovative soil farming practices, are just some of the ways one village is fighting dry conditions.

Papua New Guinea is embarking on its first national forest inventory (NFI) under the arrangements for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD)+. The inventory will include not only activities for measuring timber volume and estimating carbon stocks and greenhouse gas emissions but also, significantly, a protocol for the first survey of the nation’s forest biodiversity.

The combined inventory will make it possible to assess the trade-offs between protecting biodiversity and reducing emissions, in order to promote sustainable forest management and improve local forest community livelihoods.

The data produced by Papua New Guinea’s NFI will be instrumental in developing sound government policies to sustainably manage the nation’s biodiverse forest heritage, on which most of the nation’s population depends, for the benefit of present and future generations.