The mandate to carry out the Global Forest Resources Assessments stems from the Committee on Forestry (COFO) and the basic statutes of FAO.

The Global Forest Resources Assessment update for 2005 (FRA 2005) was specially mandated by the COFO 2001 and COFO 2003, which confirmed the recommendations from the Kotka IV Expert Consultation. The COFO 2001 and 2003 also recommended that FRA conduct assessments at five- year intervals in order to relate the reports to international forestry processes and implement them as broad-based assessments. For this purpose, all countries were requested to provide FAO with national reports in 2004.

As with previous global assessments, FRA 2005 relied on the participation of and contributions from countries via the network of national correspondents to FRA. Furthermore, an advisory group was formed in order to assist the process of FRA 2005.