News on partnership and collaboration

Joint workshop was organized by GFIS and WFSE at CATIE, Costa Rica March 25-30, 2007. Also the arrangements of successive GFIS and WFSE workshops were discussed.

A scientific abstract and an oral presentation of WFSE activities under the title of "Making forests in the developing world work for people and nature" were introduced by Heidi Vanhanen at IUFRO Division VI Symposium: Integrative Science for Integrative Management at Saariselkä, Finland, August 14-20, 2007.

The Coordinator Gerardo Mery and Heidi Vanhanen participated in the EFI Annual Conference September 5, 2007 in Warsaw, Poland.

The process of producing and the draft contents of The Policy Brief: Making European Forests Work for People and Nature were presented by Heidi Vanhanen for discussion at the IUFRO European Congress 2007: Forests and Forestry in the Context of Rural Development, September 6-8 in Warsaw, Poland.

Visit to FAO, Rome by Gerardo Mery, NRCan representative René Alfaro and Jari Varjo of Metla presenting the past and future project activities of WFSE and discussing possible further collaboration, September 24-26, 2007.

Steering Committee meeting of WFSE on October, 23-24, 2007 in Bogor, Indonesia, deliberated the tentative contents of the book to be lauched in the IUFRO World Congress 2010. Also the schedule for WFSE Policy Briefs as well as the organizational issues were discussed.

The Task Force workshop to initiate the Policy Brief: Making Sub-Saharan Forests Work for People and Nature was held in Nairobi, Kenya, 15-17 April 2008 (see Photo album). The Policy Brief will be a joint initiative of IUFRO-WFSE, ICRAF, CIFOR and AFF.