The Second Advisory Committee Meeting of APFSOS III was carried out on 14-15 November 2018 at CIFOR Headquarters, Bogor, Indonesia. There were three main objectives of this meeting which included discussing about the key findings and  recommendations of APFSOS III,  and about the completion of APFSOS III, and to get feedback from Advisory Committee members about the progress and challenges of APFSOS III. A day prior to the meeting (13 November), technical workshop and thematic focus group discussion on forestry scenarios in Asia-Pacific region 2030 and 2050 was convened. This meeting generally discussed about how forestry would be in 2030 and 2050 regarding bussiness as usual, aspirational future, and disruptive future.

The meeting was attended by 26 experts from various organizations related to forestry in the Asia-Pacific region and 3 youth representatives from the IFSA. The three IFSA representatives included IFSA President Dolores Pavlovic (Serbia), Sylvannisa Putri Nina (Indonesia), and Rizal Danang Firdaus (Indonesia). IFSA’s participation in this meeting was to raise youth voices towards the future of forestry (2030 and 2050) and providing their perspectives about forestry pratices in the future.

Thematic Focus Group Discussion and Technical Workshop on Forestry Scenarios in Asia-Pacific 2030 and 2050 was officially opened with opening remarks delivered by Mr. Robert Nasi (Director General of CIFOR) and Ms. Eva Muller (FAO Rome representative) who emphasized about how important the initiative in developing the scenarios. During this meeting, Our President, Dolores Pavlovic presented an overview of how IFSA works and about the engagement of youth in scenario development. She Highlighted that the voices of youth are very important because young people are proactive, innovative, full of ideas, and key part of the solutions. There are about 1.8 million youth populations in the world and about 60% of them live in the Asia-Pacific region. This makes young people as the agents of social change that can contribute both regionally and globally. Youth have an important role in the various scenarios that have been set regarding the future of forestry such as the SDGs scenario, Bonn Challenge, etc. The perspective of youth can give a glimpse on future forest scenario because young people will become our leaders in the future. Thoughts about how forests and forestry in 2030 and 2050 can be used as a reference in determining forest policies because, youths are a part of several megatrends that have been perceived nowadays. Overall, this meeting discussed  proper scenario in preparing the future of forestry from various prespectives connected with megatrends that will exist on several aspects such as demography, socio-economic, environment, technology, and governance. Another objective of the scenario was to discuss and propose robust action that could be taken under various scenarios to increase the likelihood of achieving outcomes and avoiding undiserable consequences. For 2050, scenario must be uncertain but important using two-axes approach to analyze and creat the scenario. Furthermore, thoose aspects were linked to three main scenario, including bussiness as usual, aspirational future, and disruptive future. Then, the meeting was closed by Thomas Hofer, senior forestry officer and NRM group leader of FAO Bangkok who highlighted key messages and results of this meeting.

Second Advisory Committee Meeting of APFSOS III

Second Advisory Committee Meeting of APFSOS III was convened on 14 and 15 November 2018. The meeting was officially opened with welcome remarks by Mr. Vincent Gitz, Director CRP on Forest Trees and Agroforestry who expressed support for this meeting. It was followed by special remarks from Eva Muller, Director Forest Policy and Resources Division FAO. She highlighted how important this scenario and collecting various prespectives from different aspects must be taken into account. Another remarks were delivered by Mr. Anura Sathurusinghe, Forest Deparment Sri Lanka and Mr. Gan Kee Seng, APAFRI who highlighted their support and appreciation on this initiative. The meeting was continued by Introduction and Scope of APFSOS III delivered by Mr. Thomas Hofer, and overall update on the progress of APFSOS III, delivered by Mr. Yurdi Yasmi, forestry officer of FAO Bankok. Then, it was followed by brief review of every chapter of early drafts who were delivered by Mr. Yurdi Yasmi, Mr. Thomas Hofer, and Mr. CTS Nair, FAO Consultant. This meeting discussed about revising every chapter of early draft.

This meeting was mainly revising every chapter of the earlier drafts. These Drafts were generally containing several forest-related issues such as forest landscape, society, production and value chain, environment, economic, science and technology. Every perspectives of participants was needed in order to make every chapter shorter but stronger. Participants were broken out into several groups to discuss more closely about each chapter such as gaps and issues, to propose messages from each chapter and propose potential key recommendations from each chapter. In this agenda, IFSA delegates represented youth Perspectives of each chapter in order to provide youth voices in policy-making processes. As youth representatives, delegates also revealed their opinion about the laxity of each chapter. Youth voices are really important because youth will live in the future and fill important positions in every sector especially forestry sector. Before the end of the meeting, every representatives of each group conveyed emendation of  the drafts. At the end, Mr. Yurdi Yasmi delivered completion of the report and next agenda regarding APFSOS III such as youth consultation, next expert meeting in Bangkok, Asia-Pacific Forestry Week, etc. This meeting succeeded in bringing together ideas from diverse perspectives. This meeting was officially closed by Ms. Eva Muller who express her appreciation for this meeting.

  • Rizal Danang Firdaus (Indonesia)
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