At its Seventeenth Regular Session (Rome, 18-22 February 2019), the Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture adopted a funding strategy for the implementation of the Global Plan of Action for the Conservation, Sustainable Use and Development of Forest Genetic Resources. The funding strategy is annexed to the Report of the Seventeenth Regular Session which was made available today on the website of the Commission.

The purpose of the funding strategy is to mobilize financial resources and to strengthen international cooperation to support developing countries and countries with economies in transition in their efforts to implement the Global Plan of Action. It has the following three objectives:

1) to mobilize financial resources from existing multilateral financing mechanisms by mainstreaming the conservation, use and development of forest genetic resources into large and holistic actions country-led actions that are designed to enhance the implementation of sustainable forest management and forest-based adaptation and mitigation measures for climate change;

2) to further mobilize financial resources from all possible sources for strategic and specific action on forest genetic resources at national, regional and international levels; and

3) to cooperation with relevant ongoing forest financing initiatives, in particular the Global Forest Financing Facilitation Network (GFFFN), established by the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF), to make available information on existing and emerging funding sources.United Nations Forum on Forests

The Commission also endorsed the Voluntary Guidelines for Preparing a National Strategy for Forest Genetic Resources and noted the importance of countries having a national or subnational strategy for forest genetic resources in place in view of climate change. Furthermore, the Commission adopted the outline and timeline for the preparation of The Second Report on the State of the World's Forest Genetic Resources (to be released in 2023) as well as the guidelines for preparing country report for this purpose.