04-02-2013 - Dear colleagues,

I have to inform you about recent developments regarding the FCN mandate. The current mandate of the UNECE-FAO Team of specialists 'Forest Communicators Network' will expire by end of 2013. Upon request by the TC-EFC Secretariat the FCN Leaders put together a proposal for a new mandate (Terms of Reference, ToR) for 2014 and beyond. We based this proposal on our 20 years of experience with collaborative work on forest communication issues in the region and on the strategic discussions we had at our last FCN meeting in Antalya.

The TC-EFC Secretariat came back on our draft with several significant amendments, of which we could not support all. After a time consuming unproductive back and force communication with the Secretariat we provided a draft with several amendments meant to address some of the Secretariats concerns. Please find attached this draft ToR proposed by the FCN Leaders on 27 March.

What you will also find attached is the draft ToR the Secretariat now presents and intends to send out as 'final'. As it is fundamentally different to what the FCN Leaders propose and completely ignores substantive arguments repeatedly brought forward by the FCN Leaders, I had to inform the Secretariat that we are not in the position to accept and support their proposal.

It is my duty as Leader of the FCN to inform you about this step and also about the fact, that I will not waste any more time and energy into unfruitful debates on proposals that will not work. I am also not entitled by my employer, who pays my salary, to involve any further in suggested approaches, where we do not see clear merits for the forest and forest products sector. At the end the TC and the EFC will have to decide, what they want.

What I and my fellow FCN Leaders will rather focus on now is the fulfilment of the mandate we have until end 2013, in particular the preparations for our up-coming FCN meeting, to take place from 21 to 23 May in Tallinn/Estonia. We look very much forward to it and intend to make it, together with you all, another inspiring milestone of FCN work. Further information on agenda and logistics will go out very soon.

Please find following some explanations on the major discrepancies between what we suggest as ToR for the FCN for 2014 and beyond, and what the Secretariat, reportedly on behalf of the TC and EFC Bureaus, presents as 'final' draft:
Since 1994 the overall objective of the FCN has been to 'improve the ability of the forest and forest products sector' to communicate effectively, within and outside the sector. The draft of the Secretariat reduces the overall objective to 'improve the ability of the ECE Timber Committee and the FAO European Forestry'. Instead of a network established under the UN-umbrella working for the benefit of the sector, the new concept would be to have a team formed by experts from the sector working for UN-bodies. This would be a completely different group and not be the Network built up over the last 20 years, and if it was attractive for organisations and institutions of the sector to join in is questionable.

While the duration of the FCN mandate has been 4 years so far, in correlation with the TC-EFC Joint Program of Work, the secretariat insists now on a 2 years mandate, as other Teams of specialists have 2 years mandates also. However, long ago it was already understood, that the nature of the FCN is different to other Teams of Specialists. Communication needs long term approaches and network building is not a
switch on/switch off business, but takes time.  We are convinced, that the duration of the FCN mandate should be in correlation with the duration of the ECE-FAO Joint Program of Work, to respect both, the long term nature of communication and the close link of the FCN work with the joint work program.

An indispensable factor of FCN success has been the open membership policy.
Participation in the FCN has been open to all sharing the common objectives and willing to contribute to fulfilling the FCNs tasks. Members are therefore either nominated by TC/EFC member countries or participate on invitation by the FCN Leaders. At present out of the 131 persons listed  as members of the FCN only 28 are members nominated by countries. The rest are people who showed interest in the work of FCN at some point, joined in and were put on the list 'on invitation by the FCN leaders', to have some formality behind. Many of them stayed with the group and out
of the ca. 40 most active members, 35 joined the group on basis of the open membership policy, only 5 had been 'nominated by countries'. In fact, without open membership policy the FCN would be dead. It is not clear, if the rules of procedure imposed on the Teams of Specialists will allow keeping membership open. The open membership policy therefore needs to be recoginsed by the mandate.

So far the FCN has been understood as having an advisory function, reflected in the mandate as 'policy advice' under Method of Work. The Secretariat consistently replaced 'policy advice' by 'awareness campaigns'. It was however left open, what the role of the FCN would be in such campaigns, who would provide necessary funds and infrastructure to run them. The FCN is a collection of independent experts, not an institution or organisation, that could run campaigns. What these experts can do is to give communication advice to relevant institutions and organisations, also
with regard to awareness campaigns and concerted actions. The advisory function of the FCN is again missing in the Secretariats draft.

With best regards
Ingwald Gschwandtl