The biennial sessions of The World Forest Week of the Committee on Forestry (COFO) provided an opportunity for forest Associations to access to emerging policies and technical issues all over the world. Representatives from governments, donors, and non-governmental organizations discussed forest situations in each country to seek suitable policies and advanced techniques to find out feasible solutions. The goal of this event is to identify forests' contributions, including livelihoods, food security, jobs, gender equality and many other global development goals.

Photo: The 5th World Forest Week at the FAO headquarters in Rome, Italy

World Forest Week took place from 18th to 22th July in 2016 at the FAO headquarters in Rome, Italy. Civil society representatives from countries are successful on the model of forest – based communities such as Mexico, Vietnam, Gambia, and Panama. In the meeting, Mrs. Vu Thi Bich Hop – Director of Centre for Sustainable Rural Development (SRD), the chair of two networks of Non-governmental organizations in Vietnam on Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (VNGO - FLEGT) and Climate Change (VNGO – CC) shared the presentation on 'Climate change initiatives and issues affecting local communities and indigenous peoples". Mrs. Hop pointed out the role of local communities and smallholders in the supply chain from plantation timber, mining, Transportation of Timber, purchasing, processing of timber, Forest Conservation. 'Thousands of monitoring eyes are better than any monitoring tool", she emphasized. This speech and her broad leader vision were highly recognized and appreciated by other delegates.

Photo: Mrs. Vu Thi Bich Hop with her presentation in a session: Unfinished Agenda for Forests and Climate Change - Local Communities and Smallholders and their Organizations as the Enabling Actors to Address Climate Change

The Partner Programs such as REDD +, RRI, AMPB, CIFOR, REFACOP and ASFN, have been willing to invest in forestry organizations to implement projects in a framework that allows them to support communities as well as smallholders.

At the end of the World Forest Week, the meeting has achieved important steps ranged from guidelines, strategies to financial supports to ensure sustainable livelihoods for people in the context of climate change.