Dear Mr. Benitez
Thank you for your suggestion, which reflects the content of several regional indicator sets.
I agree that economic and social aspects should be better covered in the Global Core Set. Furthermore, data are available (this is tracked by FRA). The problem arises with the interpretation of the results. In fact the share of the forest sector in GDP is not determined by the forest sector itself, but by the rest of the economy. There are many cases of dynamic and expanding forest sectors in countries with strong economies, where the share of the forest sector in the national GDP is small – and shrinking. This is due to the fact that other parts of the economy (services, information technology, etc. etc.) are much larger and growing faster than the forest sector (typically the forest sector accounts for less than 1% of GDP). There is little that forest sector policy makers can, or should, do about this.
Perhaps the economic dimension could be strengthened by an indicator of “Gross value added by the forest sector as ratio to forest area “(in $/ha). This would also have measurement problems, notably the omission of forest related income not included in the “forestry and logging” part of national accounts (forest related tourism, teaching, research, subsistence livelihoods etc.), but, it seems to me, could be a good start.
Thanks again. What do you, and others contributors, think of my suggestion?
Kit Prins
Facilitator
Mr. Christopher Prins