The assessment report is prepared by an Expert Panel on “international forest regime“, which consists of internationally recognized scientific experts in their field and is overall coordinated by the IUFRO-led initiative “Global Forest Expert Panels” (GFEP) of the Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF).

As part of the assessment process, the second meeting of the Expert Panel on the International Forest Regime was held on 7-8 July 2010 at the Headquarters of the United Nations Environment Programme in Nairobi, Kenya. 30 renowned experts in political science and international law gathered at this meeting to discuss the draft manuscripts of the assessment report and identify the conclusions emerging from the assessment.

Prior to the Nairobi meeting, all draft manuscripts of the report had been reviewed and commented in detail by 25 invited reviewers as well as this GFEP assessment was already initiated in October 2009 on the issue of the “international forest regime“.

The experts who gathered in Nairobi agreed on the idea of “embracing complexity” as the main storyline of the report and highlighted the potential for positive interactions between key elements of the international forest regime on issues such as reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, access and benefit sharing, and forest law enforcement, governance and trade.

The assessment will be completed in autumn 2010. It will provide concrete proposals for better coordination and better outcomes of the international forest regime and is expected to make a major contribution to the International Year of Forests 2011. Listen to the podcast: Interview with Alexander Buck (GFEP Coordinator) for more information: