Regional activities

Warmest thoughts and best wishes for a wonderful holiday. One of the real joys this holiday season is the opportunity to say thank you and wish you the very best for the new year.

10 years ago, the Europe and North Asia Ministerial Conference on Forest Law Enforcement and Governance in St. Petersburg, Russia, brought together nearly 300 participants from 48 countries representing governments, the private sector, civil society and international organizations.

The FLEG II Steering Committee, the highest decision-making body of the program, met in Chisinau, Moldova, to discuss progress during the second year of the Program, review and approve work plans for the upcoming year, and talk about priorities for the program’s final year.

On September 20, Belarus, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine celebrate the Day of the Forester. As part of the celebration, we are launching our Tree Identification Quiz.

A valuable new tool is in the making to better assess the basic elements of a community’s reliance on its forests and help policy & forest resource practitioners identify threats and opportunities associated with forest resource use, even in the absence of direct in-person research in that community.

Key findings of the regional analysis of the outcomes of the national-level TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) scoping studies for the forestry sectors of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia were presented at a regional stakeholder meeting under FLEG II in Tbilisi, Georgia on 29 April 2015. The authors of the scoping studies, representatives of the Governmental and NGO sectors and academia from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia attended the meeting.

March 21 is the International Day of Forests, the FLEG II Program is joining in the celebrations with the publication of a new gallery of photographs from the seven countries that are the beneficiaries.

Despite gas infrastructure and the availability of commercial groceries, many Eastern European communities still depend on what they can collect from forests and nature to meet a significant portion of their household needs, and even for their survival, a new study shows.

In this issue, we inform you about the FLEG II Program activities in Azerbaijan, Armenia, Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine from July to mid-October 2014. In future additions of the newsletter, we intend to keep you abreast of the Program progress in each of the seven countries, including the ongoing work in Russia and Belarus.