Forest Europe discussions for upcoming term

The new edition of State of the European Forests will be presented soon by Forest Europe, on 9 December. This report, which is published every five years, provides comprehensive information on the status and trends in forests and forestry in the pan-European region, based on the criteria for sustainable forest management.

EUSTAFOR has long been involved in the Forest Europe process, either at Expert Level Meetings (ELM) or at the Team of Specialist (ToS) meetings. The most recent ToS meeting took place in Siegburg, Germany on 9 September. The two main topics were:

1. Discussion on improved consistency of FRA reporting on planted forests.
2. Discussion on improved forest damage/disturbance assessment in the ECE region.

The first discussion was rather short and focused mainly on the different definitions that countries currently use and whether those definitions are still appropriate.

The second discussion focused on the draft background document for improved disturbance monitoring. The most important comment to discuss was on the distinction between damage and disturbance. The proposed argument was that the term damage implies a negative effect on the forests’ value for mankind, whatever that value may be, whereas the term disturbance is neutral. After discussion it seemed that there were certain complications in this reasoning; there were varying opinions on what would classify as damage and what the threshold should be for the disturbances to be reported on inventories. It seemed that for many countries this proposed distinction between damage and disturbance in their National Forest Inventories (NFIs) would be impractical.
The categorization of disturbances was also discussed intensively. The biggest proposed change compared to the FAO reporting standard (2023) is the subdivision of the category “weather events”. This category is proposed to be split into snow/ice, storm, drought, and other. Most participants agreed that this would be a useful distinction. The discussion focused furthermore on which disturbances would fall under the “Other” category.

No conclusions were drawn during this session, but the participants’ input was noted by the FAO and will be taken into account when drafting the new background document. The text will be circulated among the Team of Specialists for feedback before final publication.