Support for the implementation of the National Forest Program (NFP) - L’appui à la mise en œuvre du Programme Forestier National (PFN)

Code: (UTF/MOR/037/MOR)

General context

During the last two decades, in particular, after UNCED, and the processes that followed, World Food Summit (WFS), Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), Millennium Development Goals MDGs, etc. Morocco is in the midst of a political, economic and social transition characterised by an increasingly wide opening at emergence of new dynamic forces and an active civil society. As a result, it reoriented and revised its policy towards a sustainable development processes construction, regarding its triple dimension: ecological, economic and socio-cultural. In this sense, political will has resulted in:

Strategic political/economic choices affecting the areas of liberalization, regionalization and decentralization, education and training, and the fight against poverty;
National strategies and action programmes in the socio-economic field, environmental protection and sustainable management of natural resources.

Objectives

The project support, in its first phase (2005-2008) resulted in the development of seven products responding to five immediate objectives relating to the following three main areas of activity:

Strategy and management:

Development and implementation of the institutional organization of the HCEFLCD (organization chart, missions and attributions of central services);
HCEFLCD internal and external communication plan;
HCEFLCD information and monitoring system.

Forest management and protection:

Program of action and forestry guides for cedar forests which are dying in the Middle Atlas; and
Development of forest fire risk maps.

Socio-economic development:

Contribution of the forest sector to the national economy and
Development plan for the aromatic and medicinal plants sector.

As part of this process, the second phase will have to maintain essentially the same objectives as the first one (2010-2014), to: consolidate and enhance the achievements of phase I and continue supporting it by establishing new objectives and new products.

Direct effects and outputs

The project is designed to continue support to HCEFLCD (Haut-commissariat aux eaux et forêts et à la lutte contre la désertification) during a second five-year phase (20010-2014) of the "FAO UTF/MOR/028/MOR Convention. Support for the implementation of the national forestry program”, taking into account the results obtained in the first phase.

The new project must take into account the new orientations of the HCEFLCD based on the development and implementation of the PIT, essentially maintaining the same specific objectives or direct effects, to consolidate and enhance the achievements of phase I, in particular:

Improve internal and external communication;
Ensure monitoring of activities and evaluation of results;
Improve the contribution of the forest products sectors;
Improve management tools for forest protection.

Output 1: The HCEFLC communication plan in place and operational.

Output 2: The HCEFLCD information system developed and implemented for common applications.

Output 3: The HCEFLCD information system developed and implemented

for specific “business” applications.

Output 4: The HCEFLCD information system developed and users’ application implemented.

Output 5: A systematic network of multi-resource soil surveys set up for the national forest inventory (IFN).

Output 6: A forest health systematic monitoring system developed and extended on national scale.

Output 7: forest fire risk maps produced and extended to DREFs of the East, Fez-Boulemane and the Middle Atlas.

Output 8: Increase the resilience of Moroccan forest to climate change.

Output 9: A strategy for improving and conserving genetic resources, in view to the adaptation of forest species to climate change, developed

Output 10: Revised Master Plan for the Prevention and Fighting of Forest Fires

Output 11: Land tenure security: an appropriate archiving system for the delimitation and registration of national forest estate proposed.

Output 12: The productivity of the timber sectors, in particular: Atlas cedar and pine, improved

Output 13: Tourist hunting in Morocco promoted and organized.

Output 14: The General Specifications concerning leaseholds of fishing and fish farming rights in continental waters, updated.

Output 15: Assessment of cork oak tree health in relation to cork harvesting operations.