Areas of continued and emerging interest

At the ten Ministerial Conferences held to date, several high-level political commitments have been adopted and will remain as the basis for future work by FOREST EUROPE.

Over the years, FOREST EUROPE has created and developed various projects and concepts that continues to deserve significant attention and emphasis. A few of these have found a home with entities outside Forest Europe but remains of great interest to our Signatories and Observers and will continue to be communicated within Forest Europe. It is also crucial that Forest Europe reflects overarching current political priorities and responds to emerging issues of policy interest. Thus, it is important that there is enough flexibility and space to discuss emerging topics of high relevance for international forest policy.

The aim of the work within these areas of continued and emerging interest is to enable greater accessibility and broader opportunities for the Signatories and Observers to engage in the process in a more flexible way, and to enable the process to promptly react to emerging issues. Areas of work will be prioritized by Liason Unit Sweden under the guidance of the GCC, if and when Signatories and Observers express additional interest in them and there are sufficient available resources for implementation.

These areas of continued and emerging interest contribute to further increasing Forest Europe’s commitment to develop common strategies to strengthen Sustainable Forest Management in the pan-European region and to find suitable responses to current forest policy challenges. The success of this work relies heavily on a strong bottom-up perspective combined with the active support of Signatories and Observers. Work in these areas can be undertaken, if and when Signatories or Observers express additional interest in them, or if certain conditions change. New initiatives and activities proposed by participants are strongly encouraged. Thus, for these areas of continued and emerging interest, potential outputs will be defined gradually based on the interest shown and available resources.