Foresters meet opens near Bogor
JAKARTA (JP): Forestry experts and officials from around the world gathered in Cisarua near Bogor, West Java, yesterday to discuss forestry issues and take part in a training program for forest certification.
The Forest Certification Advanced International Training Program -- sponsored by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) -- was opened yesterday by the Ministry of Forestry's director for foreign relations and investment, Untung Iskandar.
Participants started pretraining discussions and excursions on Nov. 24.
According to the organizing committee, the program aims to develop ways to introduce forest certification in several countries by training key people on the principles, criteria and technical details of forest certification.
Forest certification has been developed alongside the growing trends of "ecolabeling" consumer products and linking "green consumers" to producers who apply "good forest management practices".
Producers, who want better market access and more revenue, must improve forest management practices and provide an independent assessment of their forest management operations.
Forest certification measures, which cover the testing, principles and criteria of sustainable forest management, have been developed by the Bogor-based CIFOR.
About 35 forestry experts, policy-makers, forest industry managers, potential certifiers and representatives of environmental groups are attending the program which is scheduled to end Dec. 7.
The participants come from Chile, China, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Solomon Islands and Vietnam.
This is the training program's second phase. The first phase was in Sweden from May 19 to June 7, 1996.
According to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization, deforestation rates in the tropics have increased from 11.3 million hectares a year in 1980 to 15.4 million hectares a year in 1990.
But, in most temperate zones, forest areas are stable or expanding. (pwn)