The ‘Third Asia-Pacific Forest Sector Outlook Study’
(FAO, 2019), launched in June 2019 at the Asia- Pacific
Forestry Week in South Korea, highlighted two important
areas of concern for the forest sector in the region.
First, the conservation of primary forests – i.e. forests
largely unaffected by human activities -, and the sustainable
management of other natural forests are urgently needed
to safeguard biodiversity, ecosystem services and the
quality and health of the physical environment in the
Asia Pacific region. Second, the use of innovative technologies
in the forest sector, including ICT technologies and new
wood-based products, creates huge opportunities and challenges
for sustainable forest management.
Following-up on this important outlook study, FAO and
CIFOR, lead center of the CGIAR research programme on
Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA), initiated a collaboration
to develop a roadmap for primary forest conservation and
innovative forest technologies in the Asia-Pacific region.
This roadmap will be developed through a participative
process. It will contain key recommendations (policy and
concrete actions) on these two topics, informed by science.
An online inception workshop was organized on 30 July
2020 to officially launch the roadmap. The objective of
this inception workshop was to associate to the development
of this roadmap key regional experts and representatives
of governments and intergovernmental organizations, private
sector and civil society organizations, academia and research
institutions in the region. The main expected outcomes
of this workshop were:
(i) to agree on the general direction of the work /
study;
(ii) to identify experts and organizations willing to
further contribute to the study;
(iii) to start building a strong and broad community
that will accompany the development of the roadmap.
Dr. Gan Kee Seng, Executive Secretary of APAFRI participated
in this online inception workshop.
