Forest Information

SFC ad hoc Working Group on forest information

The public consultation and the institutional reactions to the Commission's Green Paper on forest protection and information of March 2010 have shown that there is a high interest across the whole stakeholder spectrum of the sector to address forest information.

Therefore, the Standing Forestry Committee (SFC) agreed at its December 2010 meeting to the Commission's proposal for setting up an ad hoc working group in order to examine the results of the discussion launched by the Green Paper in the field of forest information.

The terms of reference that the SFC agreed to for this working group divide the work in 2 phases:

a first phase consisting of reviewing the state of forest information systems in the EU and compiling a list of relevant forest information parameters that are linked to EU policies affecting the forest sector;
a second phase focussing on how the actual state of forest information can be improved, which additional information would be needed and the resources that would be required.

The ad hoc working group adopted a final report in March 2012.

Forest Monitoring and the Forest Focus Regulation

Forest monitoring aimed at providing information on relevant decision making and policy formulation at regional, national or European level. Forest monitoring has a long tradition in most Member States of the EU and through Council Regulations (EEC) 3528/86 and 2158/92, monitoring schemes were established for the protection of Community’s forests against air pollution (see: Report on the Implementation, pdf, 167KB) and forest fires (see: Report on the Implementation, pdf, 78KB).

By the end of 2003 The Forest Focus Regulation 2152/2003 was adopted, ensuring the continuity of the monitoring activities at EU level until the end of the year 2006 and allowing for the elaboration of the scheme towards other environmental issues.

Final report on the implementation of the Forest Focus scheme SEC(2010)430 has been adopted together with a staff working document (SEC(2010)978 Final.

Outcome of the Biosoil Conference hold on 9 November 2009 in Brussels.

Outcome of the Biosoil biodiversity data assessment.