Foresters meet opens near Bogor
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)