Publication

The past two decades have seen the adoption of many policy instruments designed to foster sustainable forest management, in addition to several more that have an impact on the forestry sector. These policies often have consequences for the conservation of forest genetic resources (FGR) even if they do not directly address the topic. Indeed, one over-arching concern is that although many policies have an impact on the conservation and use of FGR, they often do not spell that out directly. Instead, FGR are supposed to be subsumed in the wording “biological diversity”, implying that all levels (ecosystems as well as interspecific and intraspecific diversity) are included by default. However, most of the time, biological diversity only refers to ecosystems. To face this background and challenge, a EUFORGEN working group was asked to study the most relevant policies at national, regional and international levels to gain a better understanding on the impacts of policies on the conservation and use of FGR which are presented in this report.