Asia-Pacific Forestry Skills and Capacity Building Program - Phase 1 Summary 2008-09
Other format
This information is also available in the following format:
- A summary of outputs from Phase I projects
PDF [94kb]
The first phase of the Asia-Pacific Forestry Skills and Capacity Building Program (the Program) commenced on 1 July 2008 and is providing up to $2.3 million in 2008-09 for projects in the Asia-Pacific region. This phase of the program will conclude by 30 June 2009.
Phase I aims to assist countries in the Asia-Pacific region to increase their forest management expertise and improve the carbon sequestration performance of their forests. Phase I has five objectives:
- deliver skills based training
- capacity building
- technology transfer
- information exchange
- research.
Projects from phase I of the program are addressing these objectives by assisting forest managers and policy makers in the Asia-Pacific region obtain access to information and new technologies to support forest policy development, sustainable forest management (SFM) and the certification of forest practices.
Forest Policy Development – funding for activities under the Asia-Pacific Forestry Week and Asia-Pacific Forestry Network provided support for important relationship building, assisting with the development of policies to improve SFM, rehabilitate forests and reduce forest degradation in the Asia-Pacific region.
Sustainable Forest Management - the program supported SFM in Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos PDR, and Cambodia through fire and fuels research and information transfer on rehabilitation, restoration and management of degraded logged out forests. Training in reduced impact logging will assist companies prepare for chain of custody and legality verification auditing as well as national and sub-national workshops on auditing and monitoring protocols for codes of practice. Awareness for the potential in reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation was raised within developing countries.
Certification of forest practices – the program supported certification through training forest managers in SFM and its applications, developing a short course for assessors of legality verification and certification, and stakeholder engagement through building capacity in certification and SFM practices. The program also supported the development of guidelines for identifying the legal sources of timber imported to Australia from Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.