FOREST EUROPE EXPERT LEVEL MEETING 6-7 March 2013, Madrid, Spain

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1 FOREST EUROPE EXPERT LEVEL MEETING 6-7 March 2013, Madrid, Spain Draft Minutes The FOREST EUROPE Expert Level Meeting (ELM) took place in Madrid, Spain on 6-7 March It was attended by 55 delegates representing 24 signatory countries and the European Union, 12 international observer organizations and the Liaison Unit Madrid (LUM). The meeting was co-chaired by Mr. José María Solano López, Spain, and Mr. Knut Øistad, Norway. 1. Opening of the meeting Mr. José María Solano opened the meeting by stressing the importance of this year as a key moment for implementing the Oslo Ministerial Mandate and as the second year of the implementation of the Oslo Ministerial Decision. 2. Adoption of the agenda The agenda was adopted without amendments. 3. Update on the implementation of the FOREST EUROPE work programme At the Expert Level Meeting held in Madrid February 2012, the FOREST EUROPE work programme with prioritised joint European actions was adopted. Some follow-ups of these actions were presented Further development of Sustainable Forest Management and its tools State of the Art Mr. Hubert Inhaizer (EFI) presented the on-going EFI project related to the implementation of criteria and indicators for Sustainable Forest Management 2.He stressed the need to know about the implementation of former decisions on Sustainable Forest Management in monitoring and policy to strengthen the process. He presented the roadmap of the work: the review of the interviews recollecting experts opinions; the analysis of the national and sub-national assessments; the platforms to exchange experiences through three regional workshops and a pan-european forum; and the final report with conclusions and recommendations (by the end of November). The ELM welcomed the exercise and asked about any results of the work on how the Criteria and Indicators (C&I) are used: for monitoring, policy, dialogues; the working definitions and the use and relation with other sector and sections. Mr. Hubert Inhaizer explained that they are in the analytical phase of the work, where it is getting clear that the main use of C&I are for reporting and that the most challenging 1 All the presentations can be found at: 2 The EFI project can be found at: And the presentation can also be found at:

2 indicators will be on the report. He answered that the working definitions are only for the project exercise in order to test the results as they are quite wide and differently focused. They have a general feed back on the need of revise indicators, but they have not checked any use for verification, as the main point of the work is to share experience of the implementation of C&I at national level. Related to other sectors they are gathering only general ideas from climate change, biodiversity, tourism; and they are setting up a case study on Russian Federation as signatory of both processes Montreal Process and FOREST EUROPE. Mr. Knut Øistad (Norway) stated that the understanding was that criteria are strategies for SFM and indicators are tools to measure the development according to these strategies. Mr Kit Prins replied that this probably was the understanding when criteria and indicators was established, but it was never formally explained. Expert group to propose improvements in tools for Sustainable Forest Management Ms. Myriam Martín (LUM) provided information on the work of the expert group to propose improvements in tools for Sustainable Forest Management in the pan-european region. She summarized the kick-off meeting of the expert group 3 pointing out the main outcomes: the experts did not find the need to revise the concept/definition of SFM, it is still strong and useful at a political level, they advise to do a more proactive communication and to put SFM in a practical level. The main tools they thought must be updated were the Operational Guidelines, mainly for verification and certification, and the C&I, for implementation and communication and they reflected on the link with the LBA process. She also addressed the need to increase the flexibility in the implementation of the FOREST EUROPE work programme, and presented the proposal to prolonging this and the next activity, the roundtable to explore the proposals, till In this regard, she presented the continuation of the work of the group firstly developing a background document based on the report from the Working group on sustainability criteria for forest biomass production, including bioenergy with recommendations for further development of FOREST EUROPE policies and tools, and including new commitments and current challenges. On a second step, taking into account the outcomes of the EFI project and the background document, the group will be continue its work in two phases if feasible, one on a small brainstorming group and then the results will be addressed by the rest of the expert group. She also informed about FOREST EUROPE on-going work with the regional SFM C&I processes (ITTO, Montreal process, OFAC and FAO) to streamlining global forest reporting and to strengthening collaboration among the international processes, through a more proactive joint communication on SFM and C&I. The ELM welcomed the information, asked for some explanations on further work and accepted the need to reflect the changes on the Update FOREST EUROPE Work Programme Further improvements in forest monitoring and reporting The Chair informed about a request from UNECE, who provides the technical support for the preparations of the SoEF, regarding the publication of the next SoEF, asking to have the copyright of the publication. The chair informed the ELM of the GCC members considerations on the matter. The cooperation with UNECE will continue as before. 3 The report of the kickoff meeting can be found at: 2

3 Mr. Dominique Reeb (UNECE/FAO) provided some background information explaining that last October some countries have asked why the SoEF was not translated into Russian and French, and they explained it was so because the copyright is on FOREST EUROPE. They have sought the advice of the Legal Office in New York and they have been told that as soon as the logo of the UN is in a publication it is a UN publication, so the copyright has to be in the UN or it has to be a share copyright with an organization with the same status as, for example, EFI. So they offer to publish the next SoEF under the copyright of UN, having an agreement with the other organizations involved in the elaboration of the report to use or reproduce the publication and clearly acknowledging them, and freely translate and publish it. Along the discussion he emphasized that the agreement on the sharing of work is linked to the copyright and if UNECE is involved on it the copyright must be under UN. The ELM discussed about these questions pointing out different aspects of it: that the publication is not for profit, that to have the copyright under UN means to have the report in more languages which could give a wider dissemination of it. It was also stated that UN money can be used for the publication and therefore safe the funds for other purposes, that the most important thing is to be prepared for a successful publication and we should keep on working as before with UNECE/FAO. We should focus on having a good report addressing the technical work first, and countries urged the LUM to secure the continuity of the SoEF and the accomplishment of the report. The Chair stressed and summarized that the important thing now is to continue working as it has been previously done and that we will seek for a solution in due time. Carry out a joint data collection with FAO s FRA Ms. Myriam Martin (LUM) presented 4 the on-going work with FAO-FRA and regional processes on C&I SFM streamlining forest data collection through the CFRQ (Collaborative Forest Resource Questionnaire), achieving a joint questionnaire with the common data for all the processes that will be collected under FAO s FRA network. Through this CFRQ about the 20% of the FOREST EUROPE quantitative indicators data will be collected. The rest of the quantitative data collection will be assembled by the FOREST EUROPE/UNECE/FAO questionnaire, data provided under the condition that FOREST EUROPE will have access to the data sent by the countries and will be able to use it. She informed that nevertheless not having accomplished the mandate of the ELM to do a single data collection for all the quantitative indicators with FAO s FRA and to reduce the reporting burden of the countries for this SoEF, we will seek to achieve such joint collection for the next SoEF. The ELM welcomed the information and supported and developments of the work. Next State of Europe s Forests report collaborative preparations Ms. Myriam Martin (LUM) informed on the preparations for the next SoEF within the collaborative work between the leading actors and the Advisory Group meeting on SoEF outcomes. Apart from the data jointly collected through the CFRQ and through the FOREST EUROPE/UNECE/FAO questionnaire, the qualitative indicators will be collected separately through a questionnaire directed to the specific national correspondents. 4 The presentation can be found at: ELM% pdf 3

4 Mr. Roman Michalak (UNECE/FAO) continued with a presentation 5 about the next SoEF, addressing mainly on the necessity on reviewing the FOREST EUROPE/UNECE/FAO quantitative enquiry. He explained how the Team of Specialists on Monitoring SFM are fine-tuning the enquiry and stressed that the 2 enquiries will be sent separately but fully consistent in terms of contents. He explained that the enquiry will be sent at the end of May/June, the recollection will conclude by the end of 2013, and the data analysis and the drafting of the first version of the report will be along Mr. Kit Prins (Consultant) presented 6 the on-going work on exploring a SFM Assessment for the pan-european region trying to address the question if Europe is sustainable through a set of indicators. He explained the reasons behind this exercise, the principles of the proposed method, how it will work, and the next steps of the work to be implemented in the context of the next SoEF. Along the discussion he pointed out that the assessment is inherent in the concept of the SFM C&I, and that they will not range the countries. He emphasized that it is important the assessment of sustainability to give credibility to the forest sector. The ELM welcomed the exercise indicating that the background of using the C&I to assess and asset them is in the Lisbon resolution. They reflected on the added value of this analysis for any improvements on the indicators; that it is a sensitive and political issue to include such assessment in the report and it will be better to keep the sub-regions approach and avoiding the country level. Mr. Claude Vidal (France) informed 7 about the European Forest Types and the options of work ahead. He reflected on improving or simplifying the classification and on whether including these types in the next SoEF reporting or not. The ELM discussed on the use of the EFT in the next SoEF report and reflect on the uses and benefits of this additional information, and how difficult was to provide data on this types for the SoEF 11. They concluded to stick to the previous classification of 3 forest types for the next reporting and to develop a new classification using national level approaches to forest types classification and find the way to harmonize them at regional level in the future. Monitoring and reporting on the achievements on goals and 2020 targets Ms. Myriam Martin (LUM) informed about the discussions held in the Advisory Group on SoEF about the possibility to address the monitoring and reporting on the achievements on goals and 2020 targets. The experts considered that at this stage it would not be appropriate to include it in the SoEF. Therefore, she explained a possible way to proceed by launching a project with a partner organization, as EFI, to study how to address monitoring and reporting on the achievements on goals and 2020 targets Workshop on governance and forest law enforcement Ms. Edurne Lacalle (LUM) presented the outcomes of the Workshop on governance and forest law enforcement held in Budapest last November The presentation can be found at: pdf 6 The presentation can be found at: 7 The presentation can be found at: 8 The report and presentations of the workshop can be found at: 4

5 The ELM appreciated the outcomes of the meeting and its added value to reach NGO s and Eastern countries and the exchanges between private and public sector. They reflected on the future work at pan-european level in this area, and stressed the need to following other related processes and detecting the real challenges to think on future activities, some proposed to have a future a workshop on the impact of the EUTR Valuation of forest ecosystem services Ms. Elena Estrada (LUM) summarized the on-going work of the expert group to propose pan-european approach to valuation of forest ecosystem services and means to facilitate its implementation. She presented the outcomes of the kickoff meeting of the expert group 9 with the discussion on the on-going work that it is being done in several countries and organizations, and the further work online in 3 aspects regarding: the identification of forest ecosystem services in the pan-european region, a toolbox with valuation approaches and means to facilitate implementation. She also explained the need to increase flexibility in the implementation of the FOREST EUROPE work programme, prolonging this and the next activity of this action, the work of the expert group and the workshop, till The delegates accepted the need of flexibility and reflected on the difficulty to achieve a common approach on valuation of forest ecosystem services in the region. They considered the need to focus more on best practices and examples for policy developments and markets, and on the implementation of opportunities of valuation Sustainable Forest Management in a green economy Ms. Elena Estrada (LUM) presented the updated proposal of the work programme about the possibility to merge the activities of this action into one workshop to identifying effective measures to foster and strengthen green jobs and propose pan-european approaches to raise awareness and to serve decision making on the contributions of multiple forest functions to the world economy; and to lengthen the work till Mr. Christoph Düer presented 10 the outcomes of the Lviv Forum on Forest in a Green Economy: a Country-led Initiative (CLI), from Ukraine and Switzerland, in support of United Nations Forum on Forest tackling Actions and Challenges for Countries of Eastern Europe and Northern and Central Asia. The ELM accepted the changes of the work programme related to this action, and discussed on the need to seek synergies to other activities as the CLI and the UNECE/FAO Action Plan in a green economy, and to introduce the Sustainable Development Goals. It also pointed out that the draft terms of references of the two working groups related to the former activities can be used to develop the matters for the workshop Communication strategy Ms. Luisa Cabello (LUM) explained the actions taken to enforce and improve the FOREST EUROPE communication strategy during the last year. She highlighted the improvements on the Webpage and on the news and the development of the social network through facebook and twitter. 9 The report and presentations of the Expert Group kickoff can be found at: 10 The presentation can be found at: 5

6 She presented a Communication Plan for the current year, mainly designated to support the Extraordinary Ministerial Conference scheduled for next November, 4. Information on progress of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee with the mandate to develop a Legally Binding Agreement on Forests in Europe Mr. Piotr Paschalis as a member of the Bureau provided information 11 on the developments on the work of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on a legally binding agreement on forests in Europe. He presented the results of previous sessions and the roadmap till the Extraordinary Ministerial Conference highlighting the need of having timely effective arrangements after it. 5. Preparations for the Extraordinary Ministerial Conference Mr. José María Solano (Spain) provided information on the preparations for the Extraordinary FOREST EUROPE Ministerial Conference (EMC) to be organized for the consideration of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee results and possible adoption and opening for signature. He explained that the Conference will be held in the beginning of November and that they are looking for a 2 days meeting for 46 Ministers, plus representatives from the European Union and observer countries and organizations. He put forward the different scenarios that have to be considered to prepare the Conference depending on the outcomes of the INC4 in Warsaw: 1. If the Committee decides to recommend a non-un treaty (served or not by UN organization) then there will be a need of a Diplomatic Conference to adopt the treaty. 2. If the Committee decides to recommend a UN treaty, the EMC will endorse the negotiating text and send it to the related UN body for its adoption. 3. If, in any of the above situations, the text is not closed and the Ministers have to take substantial decisions on the EMC, there will be need to allocate more time for Ministers to decide. Given that the EMC will be a FOREST EUROPE Conference and that the ELM is the organ to take decisions between conferences, he asked the meeting about the need for FOREST EUROPE to have an ELM to prepare the conference and use it to draft any decision or resolution for the Extraordinary Ministerial Conference. The ELM discussed about these issues, asked for further consideration on the matter via , and raised different ideas. They stated that the INC will present its results to the Ministers and the elements in the text cannot be changed. Nevertheless, some delegates expressed the need to have a sort of Ministerial Statement or Resolution for the Ministers, focusing on the LBA perhaps on the direction of the interim secretariat, or broader issues as how the LBA would feed into the FOREST EUROPE process. They also discussed about the need to have an ELM, either before or after the EMC, to discuss about the future of the FOREST EUROPE process and how its work can contribute to the successful of the LBA. The Chair summarized the discussion: the LUM will send to all the countries the questions raised in the meeting for a broader consultation, there will be an ELM early in September to prepare the EMC, and that the GCC will prepare any draft document needed, relying on the outcomes of the INC4, to be discussed at the ELM. 11 The presentation can be found at: 6

7 Ms. Luisa Cabello (LUM) informed 12 briefly about the communications activities to support the Extraordinary Ministerial Conference and welcomed the INC results. She highlighted the need to commit the countries to spread the message and support the different activities, and informed that FOREST EUROPE signatories and observers will soon receive a document via to request some support for some of the actions of this plan. The ELM welcomed the proposals emphasizing the need to target the audience, to creating synergies with other initiatives including the FCN. 6. FOREST EUROPE roadmap to 2020 Ms. Elena Estrada (LUM) presented a generic roadmap to 2020 to fulfil the Oslo Ministerial Mandate and the Oslo Decision: European Forests The chair also pointed out that there can be an updated roadmap for the ELM in September. The ELM discussed on the strategy that the process has till 2020 and the need to address the future role of FOREST EUROPE influenced by the LBA. They also reflected on incorporating the monitoring and reporting on Goals and 2020 Targets possible in the indicators for SFM and in the SoEF. They deliberated that there will be a two track approach for quite a while and there will be a need to re-examine the linkage between the two processes after the LBA entry into force. They considered that there will be a need to revise this short and long term strategic plan after the November EMC. 7. Exchange of information on up-coming international meetings The Chair emphasized the importance of this year for forests and the amount major activities on forests. Ms. Elena Estrada (LUM) presented the FOREST EUROPE input for the UNFF10 to be held in Istanbul from the 8-19 April She presented the regional report that has been sent to the UNFF secretariat that can be found in FOREST EUROPE and in UNFF10 Websites. On behalf of the process the LUM will possibly give a regional statement under the agenda Item 4: Regional inputs, concentrating on the achievements of FE along the last 2 years and on forests and economic development. And she informed that FOREST EUROPE will have a side-event were the Oslo Ministerial Mandate, the negotiating process and the future Extraordinary Ministerial Conference will be tackled. Mr. Serdar Yegul (Turkey) invited all participants to take part on the UNFF10 in Istanbul and to show how European countries are going towards to an LBA in Europe and sharing FOREST EUROPE experiences and conclusions with other countries. Mr. Dominique Reeb (UNECE/FAO) informed 13 about the European Forest Week to be held in Rovaniemi, Finland, 9-13 December He presented the objectives, messages and preparations for the week and highlighted the FAO platform for all contributors to upload the activities and to share with all the community. 12 The presentation can be found at: %20CONFERENCE.pdf 13 A presentation can be found at: 7

8 Ms. Taina Veltheim (Finland) emphasized that the European Forest Week will be taken place all around Europe and encourage all states and organizations to have parallel events. Mr. Thomas Huber (Germany) informed about the Opening of the Thünen Centre of Competence on the Origin of Timber in Hamburg, which took place the 4-5 March 2013, to verify the species of wood and wood products and its origins in the context of the EUTR. Mr. Andrey Filipchuk (Russian Federation) proposed to create on the Webpage a side with national forest related events for promoting and sharing information for all international organizations. The Chair welcomed the idea and opened it for LUM consideration to take onboard if feasible. 8. Other matters No other matters were raised. 9. Closure of the meeting Mr. José María Solano thanked the participants of the ELM for their contributions, highlighted the important decisions to take till the end of the year and closed the meeting