Forest Landscape Restoration Roundtable

Let me start by thanking you for organising this event. It is an opportunity for us to share views on the important role of forests - and for me to learn more about the Global Partnership on Forest Landscape Restoration.

Chairman,

The forest loss, mainly in developing countries, is a result of land-use change, most importantly conversion of forests to agricultural land, which in turn is closely connected to the rural livelihoods, the increasing demands for food, feed and fibre and the overall economic development.

Measures to reduce deforestation will be essential to achieve the target of limiting the temperature rise to 2°C. It was against this background that Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg launched Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative during the climate change negotiations at Bali in December 2007. The initiative applies to all types of tropical forests.

We are working hard to ensure that a substantial reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and degradation is included in a future global regime under the UNFCCC. The scope of a REDD + mechanism should be flexible so as to provide for the successive inclusion of other land-use and land-use change categories and activities in order to cover the whole land use sector.

We need to reduce the deforestation rate and to work actively to restore degraded forest land not only for the purpose of carbon sequestration. Forests provide a wide range of other goods and services necessary for human development and environmental values. Millions of people are dependent on forests for food, animal fodder, energy and building materials. It is a major challenge to find ways to ensure that local communities can continue to harvest sustainably from the forests, or that alternative livelihoods or paths of economic development are open to them.

Chairman,

Norway has some domestic experience in the field of forest landscape restoration.

As elsewhere in Europe, a substantial degree of forest degradation had taken place in Norway by the end of the 19th century.

A number of measures were introduced by our predecessors in order to improve the situation and to introduce sustainable management practices. Among those was our first forest assessment established in 1919.

Due to this long-term effort, the forest in Norway is currently sequestering a volume of CO2 similar to half of the country’s domestic greenhouse gas emissions.

The state of our forest provides opportunities for increased use of biomass for energy, to substitute more energy demanding construction material by wood, and enhance the environmental values of our forests.

Today our task is to maintain our forest resources and further develop the environmental values and economic benefits from our forests.

We have developed a number of important measures in this regard. This includes among other things a new and modern forest act and standards for sustainable forest management developed with the participation of all relevant stakeholders.

Furthermore, we have since long had a system of financing sustainable forest management by collecting a share of the gross income from forestry for investment in management activities. This Forest Trust Fund has proved to be an effective way to finance sustainable forest management activities.

I would also like to stress the importance of global and regional forest processes and partnerships in this regard. The Global Partnership on Forest Landscape Restoration provides a unique opportunity to highlight and give momentum to an important part of our work for sustainable forest management.

Finally, I would like to highlight an important regional process in Europe.

Through the work of the Ministerial Process on the Protection of Forests in Europe (MCPFE) we have developed strategies for sustainable forest management and tools available for our own region. MCPFE is an open, transparent process for sustainable forest management in Europe. Sustainable forest management and forest landscape restoration is about partnerships as much as planting trees.

Thank you.