PRESS RELEASE
Dar es Salaam 27th March 2013
EU TO SUPPORT TANZANIA IN
PROTECTING ITS FOREST
THE Joint Research
Centre of the European Union (Institute for the
Environment and Sustainability) and the Tanzania Forest
Services (TFS) Agency under the Ministry of Natural Resources and
Tourism(MNRT) have today signed a collaboration agreement aimed to
help to curb the alarming rate of deforestation in the country. THE CA is
complementary to the on-going NAFORMA , the first ever National forest
Assessment in Tanzania, initiate in 2009 and currently in its final
stages. Under the agreement, both sides
have agreed to cooperate in mapping the land cover changes and forest
degradation assessment in support to national readiness initiative for REDD+
(Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation).
The signing ceremony was held today Wednesday 27thd
March at the headquarters of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism in
Dar es Saalam.
Through NAFORMA, which is jointly financed
by the Government of Finland and Tanzania,
with technical support by the
Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), and the EU, Tanzania
is mapping the entire country to assess its forest resources including the size
of the carbon stock stored within its forests. This information will feed into
better policymaking to ensure Tanzania’s most valuable forests are either
conserved or utilized in a sustainable way. This would help mitigate climate
change but would also help the country in other ways such as managing its water
resources and sustaining biodiversity and rural livelihoods.
Under
the agreement, European Union and the Tanzanian Government agreed to
collaborate in obtaining scientific data needed to produce scientific information to meet data needs of
potential future REDD+ mechanism, improving
co-ordination
and effectiveness of co-operation efforts between TFS-MNRT and the European Union in the field of monitoring forest resources in the United Republic of
Tanzania and in African Countries in general.
Other
areas of agreement are promotion of mutual interest and co-operation in
understanding and resolving issues
related to the feasibility of including forest degradation as a key activity of
the REDD initiative, deepening of understanding of the scientific, economic and social
issues relating to wood extraction as the
main national source of energy. Specifically, it focuses on the estimation of
fuel-wood supply forecasts and the prediction of fuel consumption under future
energy scenarios in Tanzania, promotion of exchange of tools based on earth
observation techniques, dedicated to deforestation monitoring and forest
degradation detection and organization of capacity-building activities and
scientific workshops in the domains of monitoring of forest resources.
On
his part the Head of the Delegation of the European Union to Tanzania,
Ambassador Filiberto Ceriani Sebregondi said that the Collaboration Arrangement
marks a further step in the technical support provided by the European Union
through the Joint Research Centre to Tanzania Forest Service Agency for
sustainable forest management and also marks another chapter in our continued
close collaboration with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
"The
agreement gives the opportunity for both partners to benefit from each other’s
skills on an equal basis. We hope that, as a result, the joint work of
scientists at the JRC and forest managers here in Tanzania can be taken as a
reference for other countries wishing to establish a comprehensive forest
monitoring system that meets all aspects of the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change," said
Ambassador Sebregondi.
For more
information contact:
Tom Vens, Head Political, Press and Information
Section EU Delegation to Tanzania
http://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/tanzania/index_en.htm 
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