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The fourteenth World Forestry Congress (XIV WFC), opened in Durban, South Africa, and will continue until Friday 11 September 2015. Prior to the opening plenary, during a flag-raising ceremony, South Africa’s Working on Fire teams delivered traditional song and dance performances. After welcoming remarks from the South African government representatives, HRH Prince Laurent of Belgium, FAO Special Ambassador for Forests and the Environment, underlined the need to raise awareness on forests among young people and invest in research and forest education with particular attention to the role of women in it. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Chairperson of the African Union Commission, stressed the importance of sustainable forest management (SFM) for climate change mitigation and the protection of coastal areas and for peace and security.
Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary-General, via video, emphasized the role of SFM as vital for several sustainable development goals, while calling on forest managers to raise the potential for SFM to complement the Post-2015 Development Agenda.
Hosny El-Lakany, Alexandria University, and Bheki Cele, Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, South Africa, co-chaired a High-Level Dialogue on the Global Forest Agenda, with ministers and dignitaries discussing: the need to promote experience exchange in forest governance; adopting sustainable development goals (SDGs) related to forests; developing innovative solutions to meeting environmental challenges; building capacity in local communities to facilitate SFM successfully; and developing a long-term vision for forests that include more investments in gender equality, secure tenure and good governance, and forest education.
During the opening plenary in the afternoon, Channel 4 News presenter Matt Frei, challenged participants to “take the forest out of the woods” and address the challenge of “how to feed the planet’s growing population without killing its lungs.” Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary, UNFCCC, via video, emphasized forests’ roles in addressing climate change and stressed the need for catalyzing coordinated and coherent investments in sustainable forest management. In a special address, South African Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa highlighted important lessons on collaborative integration between nations in managing forest resources, as exemplified by South Africa’s “Working on Fire” initiative. He urged that policies related to the forestry sector be attuned to the economic, hydrological and environmental values vital to all African economies.
In the evening, participants attended six sub-thematic dialogues. In the session on forests for socio-economic development and food security, participants discussed issues relating to land tenure and creating enabling environments for local communities. The session covered the disconnect between policy formation and adoption at ground level, as well as encouraging land tenure reform effective at benefitting women and the youth.
In the session on building resilience with forests, five panelists presented on resilience initiatives from research, the economic sector, indigenous communities and regional resilience initiatives from the African and Latin American continents. In the session on integrating forests and other land uses through “feeding the world: land use options and the role of forests and trees," participants explored the constraints facing stakeholders to manage lands so as to minimize trade-offs between multiple land uses, and discussed actions to facilitate complementary land uses and meet needs for food, fibre and fuel.
In the sub-thematic session on product innovation and sustainable trade, two panels focused on the role of innovation and the potential application of citizen science. Presentations covered the need to think about forests and engage the public in new ways, and examine how technology and innovation is leveraged.
In the session on monitoring forests for better decision making, panelists explored the beneficiaries and return on investments in monitoring practices. In the session on improving governance by building capacity, panelists suggested that building capacity in forest management requires adequate governance arrangements across sectors through informed political leadership, inclusive decision-making and improved inter-sectoral capacity for collaboration.
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» WFC-14
