The Hills Leasehold Forestry and Forage Development Project provides scope for addressing the need to integrate women into the mainstream of the project planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. The project which is in its second year of implementation, realised the need to undertake a critical analysis of the project in its various aspects from a gender perspective. Subsequently an independent consultant was hired accordingly for a duration of three months. This report contains the findings, conclusions and recommendations of the consultant in this regard.

This paper outlines FAO's past and present activities on combating desertification, with particular emphasis on the Near East Region, in an attempt to mobilise all the potential efforts towards the establishment of an adequate strategy to enable this particular part of the world to build efficient regional and national programmes to combat resource degradation, restore land productivity and achieve food security.

This issue of Unasylva focuses on the challenges facing forestry extension and current attempts to respond to them.