A Country-Led Initiative by Japan and Indonesia in Support of the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) 

“International Seminar on Challenges of Sustainable Forest Management- integrating environmental, social and economic values of forests -”, a Country-led Initiative (CLI) in support of the United Nation Forum on Forests (UNFF), which was co-hosted by the Governments of Japan and Indonesia and co-organized by the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO), Forest Europe and the Montreal Process, was held on 8-10 March, 2011, in Tokyo, Japan, as a collaborative initiative for the International Year of Forests, 2011.

Since the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) took place in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the global forest community has been engaged in its efforts to advance the sustainable forest management (SFM). Various actions have been undertaken to promote and implement SFM, including the development and implementation of policy tools and instruments such as Criteria & Indicators (C&I) for SFM, forest certification, legality verrification and guidelines addressing specific areas of SFM. Recently, policy tools and instruments to deal with emerging issues, including the mitigation of climate change and conservation of biodiversity as well as installation of forest governance, is also being discussed in the related international fora, such as UNFCCC, CBD, and ITTC. With this background, this seminar was convened with the following objectives:

 To overview the international trends related to SFM since UNCED, including the discussions on policy tools and instruments for emerging issues such as REDD+ and biodiversity conservation;
 To review the development and implementation of a range of policy tools and instruments introduced for the practice of SFM , and to share experiences and lessons learned; and
 To discuss the challenges and opportunities ahead, and to consider possible future actors advancing SFM and, thereby contributing to the international deliberations on SFM.

International seminar was conducted with around 170 participants including international experts from governments, multilateral and non-governmental organizations and private sector, from around 30 countries.