FAO takes a new integrated approach to information gathering on natural resources

Rome - From simple gathering of information on forests separately from all other natural resources, FAO is taking a new step forward and monitoring the management, uses and users of natural resources and their trends using an integrated approach.

FAO is simultaneously monitoring all aspects of natural resources be it agriculture, forestry, fisheries, livestock or wildlife, to build knowledge about the real environmental and socio-economic situations on the ground, making information closer to reality and relevant to policy makers, FAO said today.
"In the real world, forests do not exist independently of the people who use and manage them. And forestry does not exist independently of other natural resources. For proper policy making on natural resources, it is therefore imperative that information on the state, management and use of natural resources is gathered in an integrated manner," said Peter Holmgren, Chief of Forest Resources Development at FAO.
"Information on natural resources must be developed in a very sophisticated and credible way. At the same time, it must be very simplified when packaged for policy makers," said Ola Ullsten, former prime minister of Sweden.
To help bring information on natural resources closer to the reality on the ground and relevant to policy makers, about 35 prominent inventory and policy experts have gathered today in Rome at FAO for three days to discuss how monitoring should be designed to best serve the needs of policy negotiations.
Improving policy making on natural resources
For the vast majority of countries, the lack of quality information and the reliance on only satellite remote sensing that provides shallow and incomplete data, has hitherto impeded policy makers from making informed decisions on natural resources.
This has led to deforestation, huge emissions of carbon into the atmosphere, loss of biological diversity, desertification and poor livelihoods in rural areas.
New, reliable and in-depth information about natural resources and their management will help decision makers verify statements on situations and trends, enabling them to make integrated policies at the international, national and local levels, FAO said.
"Many countries are now moving from satellite remote sensing only towards systematic field inventories of all natural resources concerned. This will help gather more reliable information, but the challenge is to make the monitoring efforts cost-efficient as field work is expensive," said Holmgren.
FAO is therefore helping countries to collect data on the biophysical and sociological variables to draw conclusions on the relations of each natural resource to each other and to monitor their management through the generation of quality information. The expert meeting is an attempt to find a breakthrough in policy demand driven monitoring of natural resources.
According to the Director of Forestry in the Philippines, the recent national forest resources inventory in the Philippines carried out with FAO support using the new integrated approach, has greatly improved the understanding of local forest uses and users, even if the sample was only three hundred surveyed sites. FAO has completed, is carrying out or plans similar projects in Bangladesh, Brazil, Costa Rica, Cameroon, the Republic of the Congo, Honduras, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Nigeria, Uganda, Uruguay, Vietnam, Zambia, the Near East and West Africa.

For the first time also, FAO is supporting an integrated land use assessment in Zambia and Kenya, making it more cost effective to monitor natural resources. An integrated approach improves inter-sectoral analyses of land use and potentially helps develop integrated land use policies. It also facilitates inter-sectoral dialogue for policy harmonization between agriculture and forestry, which benefits in the first place the poor rural people.

"Currently, the demand is larger than what we can handle. However, the growing network of experts on forest resources monitoring, and the increased awareness of the need for quality information are promising for the future," said Holmgren, referring also to the recent climate change negotiations where the need for monitoring of deforestation was highlighted.

Web site link: FAO support to national forest resources monitoring:
www.fao.org/forestry/ site/24672/en