The Outlook Influencing Decision-Making on Forest Policy Contacts Forests Key to a Healthy Environment and a Healthy Economy Home to at least 70 percent of the world s terrestrial animals and plants, forests provide us with essentials such as timber, medicines, food, water and jobs. Forests also clean the air we breathe and, by absorbing carbon dioxide, reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. They help filter pollution from our lakes and rivers and protect against flooding, mudslides and erosion.
Forests are renewable resources and rich, resilient ecosystems.
When managed sustainably, they can supply us with goods and services, conserve biodiversity and stabilize the environment for generations to come. At the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, world leaders recognized the importance of forests to sustainable development by adopting the Statement of Forest Principles and Agenda 21, the international sustainable development action plan. Never before have so many countries, with such diverse forest interests and circumstances, rallied around a single approach to assessing trends in forest conditions and forest management. After the seminar, Canada drew together countries from North and South America, Asia and the Pacific Rim to develop criteria and indicators for non-tropical forests and, in June 1994, the initiative now known as the Montr al Process began. In February 1995, the Montr al Process countries, meeting in Santiago, Chile, issued a declaration containing a comprehensive set of seven national-level criteria and 67 indicators to guide policymakers, forest managers and the general public in the conservation and sustainable management of temperate and boreal forests.