In November 2010, the Central Africa Forest Observatory (OFAC) became a specialized unit of the Executive Secretariat of the Central African Forest Commission (COMIFAC), a regional organization comprising ten Member States, which aims to promote regional coordination and cooperation on forest governance, conservation, and sustainable use of natural resources. The move to institutionalize OFAC within COMIFAC has facilitated more exchanges between Member States, strengthened national coordinators’ capacities to gather data, and made OFAC’s data crucial for monitoring and evaluation systems.

In 2022, one of the two flagship publications of the Central African Forest Observatory (OFAC) will be released: The State of Central Africa’s Forests. The other, The State of Central Africa’s Protected Areas, was released in 2021.

This side event will present and discuss the main findings of The State of Central Africa’s Forests, particularly related to these pressing issues:

• Current state of the forests of Central Africa’s resources and their management (land use and land cover change, trends in the timber sector, challenges for forest plantations).
• The forests of Central Africa in international debates (international financial flows, implementation of REDD+ projects, contributions to the SDGs).
• Challenges and emerging issues on the management of Central Africa’s forests
• (forest fires, peatlands and conservation, forest ecosystems and zoonotic diseases).

The side event will not only provide a platform to present these publications, but will also offer a space for reflecting on the importance of regional-level information and data, and how OFAC’s publications and tools have facilitation exchange and co-operation between COMIFAC Member States, strengthened national capacities to gather data, and produced crucial information for regional monitoring and evaluation systems.

Languages: English and French with simultaneous translation

Download flyer

Event page