Forests vital resource in sustainable development

Graziano da Silva opens meeting of FAO Committee on Forestry

24 September 2012, Rome – FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva today stressed the important role of forestry in sustainable development when he opened a five-day meeting of FAO’s Committee on Forestry (COFO).

He noted that the nexus between forestry and sustainable development was one of the cross-cutting issues considered at the Rio+20 Conference in June.

The 2012 Edition of FAO’s flagship publication the State of the World’s Forests is accordingly devoted to the role of forests in sustainable development, Graziano da Silva said.

Forests, which cover at least 31 percent of the planet, play a fundamental role in global and national economies, and in FAO’s mandate to reduce hunger, malnutrition and extreme poverty, he said.

"The success of FAO’s work in improving lives will depend very much on how we balance the use and preservation of natural resources,” he stressed. “This includes forests, which play an important role in environmental factors like carbon sequestration, soil and water quality preservation and conserving biodiversity.”

Subsistence and survival cooperation

Some 350 million of the world’s poorest people , including 60 million indigenous people, depend on forests for their daily subsistence and long-term survival...

Source: Forests vital resource in sustainable development
Author: FAO - photo Oliver Mohr / pixelio.de

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