Asia Pacific forestry skills and capacity building program

Australia's sustainable forest industries - working with Pacific Island Nations to introduce sustainable forest management.

With the financial support of the Australian Government, ForestWorks and the Australian forest industries are assisting Pacific Island nations to sustainably manage their forests. Working directly with local stakeholder groups in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Indonesia, Australian experts provided planning support and training to communities preparing for forest certification.

Environmental certification is considered one of the substantive steps that forest dependant communities will take to demonstrate their forest management is sustainable. The project's stakeholders included local industry associations, trade unions, landowner groups and governments. Their involvement ensured community and national needs were met through the project's emphasis on real sustainability - economic, social and environmental. 

The project focused on certification in the context of specific forest and community needs - providing recognition that sustainability often means different inputs and outcomes in each country, region or community.  

In this project, the Australian Government and ForestWorks were supported by:

• Forestry & Furnishing Products Division of the Construction, Forestry, Mining & Energy Union (CFMEU)
• National Association of Forest Industries

This was the first stage of a process to ensure that sustainable forest management contributes to the development of sustainable livelihoods for landowners and workers in developing countries. Through these longer term projects, emissions from unsustainable forestry activities can be reduced by replacing them with sustainable activities.

As a result, traditional land uses and balances are more likely to be retained as the local communities and landowners benefit from the incomes they can derive from the sale of sustainable harvested wood products. With a complete mix of sustainability measurements for their forests - economic, social, labour and environmental - forest dependant communities will be entitled to additional economic benefits available from verifiable credits earned from avoided deforestation schemes like REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation).

This project demonstrates that emissions can be reduced by sustainable forest management, leading to long term social and economic benefits for forest dependant communities in developing countries.