Salt Lake City, Utah, United States – More than a thousand international delegates gathered at the Salt Convention Center in Salt Lake City for the opening of the 24th IUFRO World Congress on October 6, Monday. The Congress has been held every five years since its establishment in 1892. The theme for this year’s event is “Sustaining Forests, Sustaining People: The role of research.”
Niels Elers Koch, President of IUFRO (above), opened the Congress by explaining that successful research should be people-driven.
“The role of research is more than that of discovering new aspects about forests and trees, providing hard facts and figures for policy and management decisions,” he said. “Research is also a means of interconnecting people across scientific disciplines and national boundaries, across age and gender lines, and languages and cultures in order to exchange knowledge, share experiences, and learn from each other.”
The tone of the Congress was set by a moving cultural performance by Native Americans (below). The IUFRO Scientific Achievement Award (SAA) was also given to 10 scientists from across the continents for their outstanding contribution to forest research.
Eduardo Rojas-Briales, Assistant Director General for Forests, UN-FAO, encouraged all delegates to continue their efforts in providing sound and scientific information to national and international forest policy making bodies as members states of the United Nations continue to stress the need for solid scientific advice and research to reinforce policy discussions.
“We all have a crucial responsibility to communicate by all means possible that from a technical and scientific perspective, the short-term social, mid-term economic and long-term environmental demands can be integrated through sustainable forest management,” he said.
Thomas Gass, Assistant Secretary-General, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs appealed to the delegates in attendance for help in pushing forth sustainable development.
“Sustainable development is the only path to fully understanding how interwoven our lives, economies and environments are,” he said.“The trade-offs we face in balancing forests, agriculture and climate change priorities can be addressed by scientific inputs to help foster informed decision making on cross-sectoral strategies. We need your help in identifying the most optimal policies for sustainable development.”
Mr. Rojas-Briales also explained that the availability of research and scientific information on equitable distribution of benefits from the forests will also be crucial if future projects, especially in the sector of forestry, are to be successful.
“The necessary returns from the sustainable management and restoration of forests have yet to be distributed in an equitable way,” he said. “Many failures have been recorded in projects focusing on natural resources including forests which had laudable objectives but neglected the distributional impact on equity.”
The Congress opened on October 6, 2014, and will continue through October 11. For more information about the event, visit www.iufro2014.com.
News Type:
- News Brief