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FAO/INBAR Global Bamboo Thematic Study Workshop

Co-sponsored by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), China State Forestry Administration (SFA) and Chinese International Center for Bamboo and Rattan (ICBR) a joint international workshop was held at INBAR in May 09-12, 2005 in Beijing, China. The main objective of the workshop was to support FAO/INBAR joint Bamboo Thematic Study as a part of the FAO Global Forest Resource Assessment (GFRA) 2005. The GFRA is arranged by FAO since 1949 every 5-10 years and is the ultimate source of information for the global forest resources statistics, programs and processes. This is the first time since 1949 when Bamboo Thematic Study was officially included in the final GFRA report along with the other six important studies such as plantations, mangroves, forest ownership etc.

About 50 participants attended the workshop, including FAO FRA National Correspondents and their representatives from over 30 countries across the globe. Participants reviewed the current status of global forest resource assessments and availability of information on bamboo. They concluded that there is an urgent call to develop techniques to assist data collection and to incorporate bamboo and rattan data in the national forest survey programs with the assistance from the FAO and INBAR. The workshop developed a set of recommendations and decisions to facilitate the bamboo assessment, including requests to participating countries for the information and methodology sharing. It was also decided to develop technologies and training workshops in order to improve national forest survey systems. The first hands-on training Workshop in the series took place according to the meeting resolution in October24-November04 2005 in China.