Please notify us if you change address. The next step is to put them into practice. An Amerindian ranger uses a global positioning system during a strategic inventory of the Iwokrama Forest, Guyana. Such inventories are an essential element of a wider framework for the introduction of sustainable forest management. This is not easy.
Many countries have limited resources with which to enforce even the best forest policies.
Worse still is the widespread poverty in many tropical countries, which remains the single biggest obstacle to the security and integrity of the forest estate. Well-intentioned foresters at the field level face another barrier caused, paradoxically enough, by the sprouting of guidelines and criteria and indicators at the national, regional and global scales. The authors present a possible framework within which appropriate field-level training and information can be provided that is both relevant to local circumstances and consistent with international standards. An expert panel to be convened this October will consider the draft guidelines and present its findings to the Council. Council delegates themselves will certainly need to cover plenty of territory this coming October.