UN: Participants Hail Adoption of Strategic Plan for Forests as Forum Opens Twelfth Session

Intimate Link of Woodlands to 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Stressed

Covering 30 per cent of the earth’s land surface and providing critical food security, energy and livelihoods for some 1.6 billion people, forests were intimately linked to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and their responsible management crucial to humanity’s future, speakers underlined today, as the United Nations Forum on Forests opened its twelfth session.
Environment Ministers, senior forestry officials and other Government representatives said the Forum — convening in the wake of the General Assembly’s adoption of the first-ever United Nations Strategic Plan for Forests (2017-2030) — was entering a new phase in which it stood poised to become the authoritative United Nations voice on sustainable forest management.  Many also welcomed its new, annual meeting structure and its emphasis on smaller, more focused discussions tackling both policy and technical issues.
Opening the meeting, General Assembly President Peter Thomson (Fiji) declared:  “Let us make no mistake on this matter — the health of the world’s forests is fundamental to humanity’s place on this planet.”  The session came at a critical time for global efforts to protect the health of its forests, he said, noting that forests helped to regulate climate, prevent land degradation and reduce the risk of floods, landslides and avalanches, while also playing a critical role in staving off the worst effects of climate change.  However, decades of unsustainable land use had destroyed, degraded and depleted enormous quantities of the earth’s natural forests, he said, pointing out that some 13 million hectares were lost every year.
Peter Besseau (Canada), Chair of the Forum’s twelfth session, noted that the Strategic Plan adopted by the Assembly last week was the first of its kind in the United Nations system.  The Forum must now move to implement that ambitious framework’s 6 Global Forest Goals and 26 associated targets, he said, emphasizing their link to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement on climate change and the 2010 Aichi Biodiversity Targets, among other international agreements.
Marie Chatardová, (Czech Republic), Vice-President of the Economic and Social Council, said that, since its establishment in 2000, the Forum had been indispensable as the only intergovernmental policy body in the United Nations that discussed all aspects of forests.  Noting that the Council’s current theme was related to the eradication of poverty through sustainable development, she said the 2030 Agenda reflected the importance of sustainably managed forests, and the Council would count on it to galvanize support in that regard.
Wu Hongbo, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, emphasized that “investing in forests represents an investment in people and their livelihoods”, especially the rural poor, youth and women.  Recalling that a number of Sustainable Development Goals and targets referred to forests — notably Goal 6 on ensuring universal access to water and sanitation and Goal 15 on sustainable forest management, combating desertification, reversing land degradation and halting biodiversity loss, he said the Forum had elevated the significance of sustainable forest management to the highest level, culminating in the Assembly’s adoption of the Strategic Plan.-----read more
https://www.un.org/press/en/2017/envdev1781.doc.htm
(from a press release issued May 1st)

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