Asia-Pacific Forestry week gets underway

Asia-Pacific Forestry Week got underway Monday in Beijing China.The theme for the event is New challenges – New opportunities. Over the course of the week delegates from around the world will engage in discussion on topics including forestry development strategy, climate change and forestry policy.

As part of the event a new study by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) was presented Monday which shows that in the last ten years Asian forest cover has increased thanks to a number of reforestation projects.

“There are many countries in the Asia region like China, the Philippines, Vietnam where the forest area has fortunately recovered in the past ten, twenty years”, says Eduardo Rojas, FAO Assistant Director General for Forestry who was present at the launch.

He told Lydia O’Kane that Asia-Pacific Forestry Week is an important way of highlighting the critical role forests play with regard to climate change, biodiversity and regulating water flows. The week runs from the 7th to 11th of November. Listen