Resource information
The Global Forest Resources Assessment Update 2005 was specially mandated by the Committee on Forestry (COFO) during its meeting in 2003, where member countries endorsed recommendations from an Expert Consultation held in the Kotka, Finland in 2002 (Kotka IV). For this purpose, all countries have been requested to provide national reports to FAO during 2004. As in previous global assessments, FRA 2005 relies on contributions by countries and a network of National Correspondents to FRA has been established. The 13th Session of the African Forestry & Wildlife Commission, which was held in Libreville in 2003, recognised that poor data quality – or a complete lack of data in some cases – was defeating efforts to come up with reliable country-level estimates. Accordingly, the Commission recommended that FAO provide assistance to countries in order to strengthen their capacities to update national inventories through technical workshops; harmonise their approaches; and to share understanding on forest terminology and methods of resources assessment. Accordingly, FAO organised a training course for national correspondents on Assessing and Monitoring Forest Land Use and Changes at FAO Headquarters in Rome, Italy, 17-21 November 2003. This has been followed by a series of regional workshops worldwide. The workshop in Accra, which was aimed primarily at English-speaking African countries, was preceded by a similar workshop in Dakar, Senegal, 20-23 July 2004, aimed at the French-speaking countries in Africa. Seventeen NCs from 22 countries participated in this workshop hosted by the Forestry Commission in Ghana. The agenda of the workshop is found in Appendix 1 and a list of participants in Appendix 2. A list of background documents for the workshop can be found in Appendix 3. Appendix 4 contains a copy of a press release on the workshop issued by the regional forestry commission in Ghana on 27th July 2004.
