Summary
On Wednesday, 18 January 2017, a Working Group of the UN Forum on Forests entered its third day of discussions at the UN Headquarters in New York City.
In the morning, delegates undertook a second reading of Chapter III and IV of the Strategic Plan, focused on the Implementation Framework and the Review Framework. Discussions centered around financing, the Forest Trust Fund, and references to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
At lunch, delegates met within regional groups to discuss the third draft text of the first two chapters of the Strategic Plan, namely the Introduction and the Global Forest Goals. Delegates provided comments on this version as well as background materials circulated - on historical levels of forest-related official development assistance (ODA) and national pledges to increase forest area. Working Group informal discussions continued late into the evening, addressing outstanding issues, such as ODA for sustainable forest management (SFM), and establishing baselines for targets.
IISD Reporting Services, through its ENB Meeting Coverage, provided daily web updates from the UNFF Working Group and Special Session. In addition, IISD Reporting Services has published a summary and analysis report of this event, which is available in HTML and PDF.
Emma Hatcher, Australia, said paragraphs on voluntary planned contributions need to be streamlined to avoid redundancy.
Catherine Karr-Colque, US, said that it unrealistic to completely eliminate illegal logging, and that the target should be to “significantly reduce” this instead.
Ecuador, for the Group of the 77 and China, said the Strategic Plan must replicate the financing commitments in Agenda 2030.
Toshimasa Masuyama, Japan, suggested deleting reference to linkages between SDG and SFM criteria and indicators within the review framework.
Negotiations continued late into the evening.
Participants collect documents for the meeting.