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In addition to news, interviews and media advisories, the FAO News and Media office is now distributing real-life stories of farmers, pastoralists, fisher folks, indigenous peoples, forest dwellers and others in the sector.
News agencies and media outlets are welcome to reproduce and reuse these stories and related photos with proper credit given. A link back to the original story is also appreciated.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- New generations of students help adapt local knowledge and practices to a changing world Twenty-year-old, Rahma (Dhina) Maulidhina has been fascinated by forests, particularly in her home country of Indonesia, ever since she was young.
Dhina works as a commissioner for the Centre for People and Forests, an international organization focused on training and research on community forestry in Southeast Asia. She is also studying
Forest Resource Conservation and Ecotourism at Bogor Agricultural University.
Like many students worldwide, she found that the COVID-19 pandemic had an impact on her studies. As one key example, field activities, an important part of the forestry curriculum, were cancelled.
With no official field trips, no animal observation and limited opportunities to visit protected areas, she found herself in a difficult position.
However, in 2021, after Dhina became president of the local committee of the International Forestry Student Association, she became involved in an international network of students where she
learned about the opportunity to join a three-week online course on “Forests and Transparency under the Paris Agreement” organized by FAO.
The initiative is part of FAO’s work to strengthen the capacity of developing countries to collect, analyse and disseminate forest-related data to meet the transparency requirements of the
Paris Agreement, which requires that all Parties report on their carbon emissions and removals. As part of the ambitious goal of keeping the global rise in temperature under 2° Celsius above pre-industrial levels, countries need to report on their progress
towards their climate mitigation and adaptation targets. Strengthening national forest monitoring systems helps produce the necessary data, information and transparency on forest-related emissions, hence supporting countries’ efforts under the Paris Agreement.
Dhina was attracted by the interesting topics of the online course and by the fact that it was open to everyone for free. Moreover, her university classes do not tackle many of the subjects
covered in the course. “The course really helped me broaden my knowledge regarding worldwide issues.”
Sustainable forest management in Indonesia
Immense and rich in biodiversity, the Indonesian rainforest is considered one of the more important of Earth’s forests.
With over 92 million hectares of forest in 2020, Indonesia comes in eighth in terms of countries with the largest area of forests globally. On the other hand, it ranked third in terms of a
country’s average annual net loss of forest area from 2010 to 2020, according to FAO’s Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020, a comprehensive
evaluation of the world’s forests based on official national statistics.
Indonesia has improved its capacity in forest monitoring and is strengthening its national forest monitoring system to ensure high-integrity forest data.
Dhina recognizes that significant changes are occurring in the forestry sector in her country. Yet, better regulation and policies to conserve and sustainably manage forests are needed. While
hunger and lack of alternatives to earn a living can limit forest communities’ options, Dhina emphasizes that while “unsustainable forest practices can be profitable in the short-term, they eventually result in scarce resources and hence worsen the situation”.
She believes that solutions also lie in communities’ existing local knowledge, as they have been living side by side with the forest for a long time. Their practices have been built over a
long period and made suitable to their environment. “What we can do is to assist them to adapt and preserve this local wisdom because the world is changing in different ways.”
Global learning on forests and transparency
In collaboration with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the online course was organized under FAO’s project Building Global Capacity to Increase Transparency in the Forest sector,
funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF). Originally intended for professionals and officers working within the forest, land use and climate change sectors, the course and
all the course materials are now publicly available on the FAO eLearning Academy website.
The full story and photos can be found here: https://www.fao.org/fao-stories/article/en/c/1471541/
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(+39) 06 570 53625 This email was issued by the Media Office at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
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