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Reports

Countdown Forests 97
A Briefings Series on substantive issues in the international forest policy dialogue.

The Linkages Global Forest Policy site
Information from the international forest negotiations at the UN. Includes:

Summary of the first IPF meeting
Summary of the second IPF meeting
Summary of the third IPF meeting

WCFSD

Summary of the first WCFSD meeting
Summary of the second WCFSD meeting

Analysis

Where is the international forest policy dialogue going? The Co-chairs of the WCFSD and IPF provided their own assessments at an IUCN-IISD workshop on October 18, 1996 in Montreal, Canada

[ Download the RealAudio Interview ] Speech by Ambasador Ola Ullsten, Co-Chair of WCFSD
20 min 59 sec
(audio file -- Requires RealAudio 2.0 player)

[ Download the RealAudio Interview ] Speech by Manuel Rodriguez, Co-Chair of IPF
16 min 39 sec
(audio file -- Requires RealAudio 2.0 player)

Socio-economic Issues in the International Forest Policy Dialogue

The nations of the world met in Rio in 1992 at the UN Conference on Environment & Development (UNCED), popularly known as the Earth Summit. Among the most contentious items on the agenda was the discussion about the global transition to sustainable forest management (SFM). The states at Rio failed to reach a legally binding agreement over forests, choosing instead to adopt a 'non-legally binding' set of guidelines, known as the Forest Principles . This accompanied a more general chapter on deforestation (Chapter 11) in the principal text of the Rio agreement, Agenda 21. The challenge since Rio has been for Northern and Southern countries to arrive at an integrated international plan of action on forests.

IISD contributes to this process with targetted communications products aimed at improving the transparency and clarity of the discussions at a variety of fora. These include the UN Commission for Sustainable Development's Inter-governmental Panel on Forests (IPF), the World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development (WCFSD), various discussions on criteria & indicators of SFM, as well as other civil society initiatives.

Canadian Resources

International Resources