At its annual meeting in New York IFFA, the Global Alliance of Family Forest Owners, decided to establish a formal organization in order to become a more powerful spokesman for family forestry in relation to international organizations, such as the UN-organizations and the World Bank. Bob Simpson from USA was elected Chairman of the Board and Mr Ivar Korsbakken from Norway was elected deputy

IFFA has existed for almost three years in the form of an unofficial network, but without a formal organization is has turned out to be difficult to have a real impact on international organizations. American-Norwegian co-operation has now resulted in a formal, but very flexible organization that will have its registered office in Washington. These decisions were taken at IFFA’s annual meeting recently taking place in New York in connection with the UN Forest Forum.
International forest policy is getting more an more important also for local forestry. We count on the UN Forest Forum to manage bridging the gap between global and local forest policy and that there will be follow-up of that work on regional level. Forest policy co-operation in Europe is already well under way; inter alia it constitutes the basis for today’s forest certification. National forest programmes in all European countries will be a possible further step, says Mr Ivar Korsbakken, Managing Director of the Norwegian Forest Owners’ Federation.
Forest is important for all countries in the world. Forestry constitutes an important element of the United Nations’ millennium target and the fight against powerty is of central importance. Ownership and possession of forest resources are current problems all over the world, even though in developing countries they are different from the issues facing foresty in Europe. If forest owners’ views are to have any impact on international level, they must be in a position to act as spokesmen for forestry on global level. Co-operation between forest owners’ associations and organized forest management in local societies is important, because then we can really assert that the whole world stands behind us; both those countries where there is traditional family forestry and those where forestry is conducted without the community have formal ownership of the property, says Mr Korsbakken.
The IFFA annual meeting decided to submit a request to the World Bank that also forest owners shall have a central role in the alliance that the World Bank has concluded with WWF concerning forestry. At the meeting Finland issued an invitation to an international family forestry congress in September next year when Finland will assume the presidency of EU.