Work Programme on the Follow-up of the Third Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe adopted at the 2nd Expert Level Meeting on the Follow-up of the Lisbon Conference (28-29 October 1999, Vienna/Austria) and modified and supplemented according to the desisions taken at the meeting

Wien

2000

44 S.

Bandaufführung

3-902073-04-7

62462

At the Third Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe (Lisbon, June 1998) the Ministers responsible for Forests recalled the forest-related decisions taken at global level, notably at the UNCED (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), and expressed their commitment to meet the objective of sustainable development of society by sharing the following vision (Lisbon General Declaration - Vision - Paragraph 1): "In the 21st century, the European forest sector, while respecting the social, economic, environmental and cultural functions of forests, will optimise its contribution to the sustainable development of society, especially to the development of rural areas, the provision of renewable resources and the protection of the global and local environment." The vision functions as the basis of the Work Programme and is reflected in its contents. In the General Declaration of the Third Ministerial Conference the ministers committed themselves to "develop a programme of work to implement the decisions of this (i.e. the Lisbon) Conference and to reinforce the implementation of previous commitments made at Strasbourg and Helsinki Ministerial Conferences, in collaboration with international bodies and organisations, in particular FAO European Forestry Commission, UNIECE Timber Committee, UNEP, ILO, NGOÖs and other relevant stakeholders." This Work Programme is intended to be used to put the commitments made by the ministers into action and to progress towards the envisioned long-term objectives of sustainable forest management and sustainable development of society by addressing open, common, pan-European issues and challenges ahead. It is based on scientific and technical co-operation in Europe and should provide a dynamic approach to problem solving in European forestry through actions at national and pan-European levels. The Work Programme is generally structured according to the three dimensions of sustainable development and sustainable forest management, namely the ecological, economic and socio-cultural dimensions, in order to make visible the contribution of the work of the MCPFE to these overall objectives (see Figure E1). Nevertheless, all elements indicated in Figure E1 touch on all three dimensions of sustainable development in principle. The assignment to one or two dimensions was done for reasons of clarity and simplification purposes.