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THE NFAP INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON FORESTRY

The Governments of Canada and the Netherlands convened a meeting of the coordinators of National Forestry Action Plans (NFAPs) in The Hague, from 13-17 February 1995. This meeting produced a document titled, "The Hague NFAP Commitment: A New Commitment to Sustainable Forestry Development," which addressed five questions: (1) Are NFAPs the best process for planning and funding forestry development? (2) Which international agencies are the best to assist in this process? (3) Is there sufficient coordination at the national, regional and international level? (4) Is funding by, and commitment of, domestic, multilateral and bilateral agencies a problem? (5) Have the necessary reforms been put in place at the national level? This document makes a series of recommendations that will be forwarded to the CSD.

The workshop concluded that the NFAPs are the most appropriate planning processes leading toward forestry development and implementation of Agenda 21. It recommended that donors should accept NFAPs and that governments should continue to update their forest strategies. Regarding the question of international agencies, the workshop concluded that there needs to be better cooperation among the NFAP partners and that governments should prevail on the World Bank and World Resources Institute to rejoin UNDP and FAO in the NFAP process. On the question of coordination, the workshop recommended that each country should immediately initiate a process of assessing and resolving obstacles to coordination and that a task force should be established to: study ways to improve coordination between partners; determine the feasibility of establishing a representative advisory body; review international institutional arrangements and provide recommendations for the creation of a world forest body, a forest convention and a global forest fund. The Hague Declaration concluded that the NFAP process is threatened by serious funding problems and recommended use of innovative domestic funding instruments, reallocation of aid agency funding for forestry and the establishment of a UN-led working group of NFAP partners to address the funding gap. Finally, the workshop concluded that reforms should be viewed as part of an ongoing national, multiparty process, recommending that each country evaluate its own forest policy to determine what reforms are necessary to advance forestry development.

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