Indicator 15.2.1 Progress towards sustainable forest management

Indicator 15.2.1: Progress towards sustainable forest management

Target 15.2: By 2020, promote the implementation of sustainable management of all types of forests, halt deforestation, restore degraded forests and substantially increase afforestation and reforestation globally

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

Definition:

“Sustainable forest management” (SFM) is a central concept for Goal 15 and target 15.1 as well as for target 15.2. It has been formally defined, by the UN General Assembly, as follows:

[a] dynamic and evolving concept [that] aims to maintain and enhance the economic, social and environmental values of all types of forests, for the benefit of present and future generations” (Resolution A/RES/62/98)

The indicator is composed of five sub-indicators that measure progress towards all dimensions of sustainable forest management. The environmental values of forests are covered by three sub-indicators focused on the extension of forest area, biomass within the forest area and protection and maintenance of biological diversity, and of natural and associated cultural resources. Social and economic values of forests are reconciled with environmental values through sustainable management plans. The sub-indicator provides further qualification to the management of forest areas, by assessing areas which are independently verified for compliance with a set of national or international standards.

The sub-indicators are:

1. Annual forest area change rate
2. Above-ground biomass in forest
3. Proportion of forest area within legally established protected areas
4. Proportion of forest area under a long-term management plan
5. Forest area under an independently verified forest management certification scheme

A dashboard is used to assess progress related to the five sub-indicators. The adoption of the dashboard approach aims at ensuring consideration of all dimensions of sustainable forest management and provides for clear view of areas where progress has been achieved.

Concepts:

See Annex 1 with Terms and Definitions.

Sub-indicators 1 to 4

Data are collected by FAO through the Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA). Assessments have been carried out at regular intervals since 1946 and are now produced every five year. The latest of these assessments, FRA 2020, contains information for 236 countries and territories on about 60 variables related to the extent of forests, their conditions, uses and values for several points in time.

Sub-indicator 5

Currently, forest certification by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) are included in the data submissions. The latter includes several national/regional certification schemes that have been endorsed according to the PEFC standards.

Data on forest certification are submitted annually to FAO by the head offices of the respective forest certification scheme. Data include the area certified by each scheme, as well as areas that are double-certified by the two schemes. That allows for estimating the total certified forest area, adjusted for double certified area.

The data for sub-indicators 1 to 4 are provided by the countries through a global network of officially nominated national correspondents. For the countries and territories which do not have a national correspondent, a report is prepared by FAO using previously reported information, literature search, remote sensing or their combination.

For sub-indicator 5, forest certification, data are provided by head offices of respective forest certification scheme.

The five sub-indicators chosen to illustrate progress towards sustainable forest management do not fully cover all aspects of sustainable forest management. In particular, social and economic aspects are summarized under the sub-indicators on areas under sustainable forest management plans. Furthermore, as the trends are calculated using only those countries which have data complete time series, different sub-indicators may reflect different sets of countries.

While the dashboard illustrates the progress on the individual sub-indicators, there is no weighting of the relative importance of the sub-indicators.

National data on forest area, biomass stock, forest area within protected areas, and forest area under management plan are reported directly by countries to FAO for pre-established reference years. Based on the country reported data, FAO then makes country-level estimates of the forest area net change rate using the compound interest formula. The proportion of forest area within protected area and under management plan is calculated using the reported areas for each reference year and the forest area for year 2015. Data on forest area under an independently verified forest management certification scheme are reported to FAO by the head offices of respective forest certification scheme, who are jointly adjusting the figures to remove any double accounting.

No dashboard traffic lights are made at country level.

2023-05-15

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

15.1.1: Forest area as a proportion of total land area

1