Technology to Manage Sustainability of Forests

Wilbur Sabido

This morning at the Radisson in the city, a pair of strategies was formally introduced by the Forest Department for sustainable forest and forest fire management.  The launch coincided with the presentation of SMART Technology, short for Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool.  Funded by the Global Environmental Fund, both documents are geared towards promoting the sustainable use of natural capital.  Chief Forest Officer Wilbur Sabido explains:

Wilbur Sabido, Chief Forest Officer

“We are launching two communication strategies for the Forest Department; one dealing with the sustainable forest management and the other dealing with fire management.  Now, we consider these two strategies as very important instruments or tools that the Forest Department can use in order to promote responsible use of our forests.  Now the two documents that we are launching today came about as a result of a project that we have ongoing that is funded by the Global Environmental Facility, GEF, through the Forest Department.  We are implementing a project called the Key Biodiversity Areas Project and that project has one of its key components as promoting the sustainable use of our natural capital, and in our particular case, since for the Forest Department, forests are close to home, we have then embarked on an extensive baseline assessment of what are the stakeholders views and opinions about forests and protected areas and use of other natural resources and to basically try and understand how best we can approach the topic with them so that we can promote sustainable use of our forests.”