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mandate to facilitate national efforts to implement
sustainable forest management (SFM) and enhance
coordination among international instruments, organi-
zations and institutions with significant forest-related
responsibilities. The Collaborative Partnership on
Forests was established to assist the work of the UNFF.
The first review of the UNFF in 2005-2006 found its
members no closer to agreement on a forest law and,
in 2007, the UNFF and the United Nations General
Assembly adopted the Non-legally Binding Instrument
on All Types of Forests (NLBI). The NLBI creates a
framework for national action and international coop-
eration to enhance implementation of SFM and the
achievement of the four global objectives on forests
endorsed by the UNFF in 2006.
10
The NLBI thus stands as the main output of state-
centred efforts to create unified, forests-focused
governance. While the issue of a legally binding conven-
tion may be raised again in the next UNFF review,
scheduled for 2015, other forest-related developments
have been proceeding on largely parallel tracks and now
challenge the very existence of state-centric governance.
In the run-up to UNCED, for example, two new
conventions were developed: the Convention on
Biological Diversity and the UN Framework Convention
on Climate Change. Subsequently ratified by sufficient
numbers of signatories, they have created binding inter-
national law. The conferences of the parties to these
conventions have increasingly taken up forest-related
issues in the context of their own respective mandates
and in some cases, for example the Reduced Emissions
from Deforestation and Land Use Degradation (REDD)
and REDD+ processes for climate change mitigation,
succeeding in driving the global forest policy agenda.
A similar process has brought the signatories to other
UN conventions, on wetlands or desertification, for
Key components of forest governance
The origin of the current portfolio of international forest agree-
ments is usually considered to spring from the International
Tropical Timber Agreement. As with similar ‘trading and conserva-
tion’ regimes negotiated at around the same time, the ITTO proved
better at promoting trade than sustaining the resource and the 1980s
saw growing international concern about the continuing destruction
of tropical forests due to shifting agriculture, cattle ranching and
over-exploitation for timber production. At the same time, environ-
mentalists drew attention to the degradation and loss of temperate
and boreal forests due to industrial forestry practices and, in some
cases, pollution from intensive agriculture, along with urban and
industrial development. Along with the rising salience of environ-
mental issues came a recognition of the vital importance of forests
as renewable sources of a wide range of goods and services at local,
national and global levels, including food, medicine, fuel, shelter,
clean water, soil stabilization, flood control and livelihood support.
8
This contribution of forests to human well-being and to the newly
coined goal of sustainable development received global recognition in
1992 at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development
(UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, when leaders adopted Chapter 11 of
Agenda 21 on combating deforestation and the Non-legally Binding
Authoritative Statement of Principles for a Global Consensus on the
Management, Conservation and Sustainable Development of All Types
of Forests (the Forest Principles). These documents represented the first
attempt to reach a global consensus on the multiple benefits provided
by forests, the key elements of national policies needed to maintain
those benefits for present and future generations and the new forms
of international cooperation needed to support these national efforts.
At this point, many expected the international community to
move relatively quickly to negotiate a legally binding multilateral
agreement on forests on the basis of the Forest Principles. For
various reasons, such an agreement proved elusive.
9
As a compro-
mise between the parties who wished to negotiate a legally binding
instrument and those who opposed it, the United Nations Forum
on Forests (UNFF) was created in 2000 with a renewable five-year
Forests play a vital role in the provision of goods and services
Image: IUFRO
The challenge is to ensure that forest sustainability goals are met
amid competing objectives
Image: Matti Nummelin