March 13th, Maison de la Forêt (Bordeaux, Aquitaine)
The IEFC European Institute of the Cultivated Forest has renewed its administration board and elected its new President, M. Inazio Martinez from the Bask forest and agronomy research institute NEIKER, succeeding to the 4 years of president of Margarida Tomé, Professor of the Agronomy Institute of the Technical University of Lisbon.
During this assembly the projects and events organised by the IEFC were presented :
- The FORSEE Project: A network of pilot zones to evaluate de feasibility, the pertinence and the cost of the indicators for the sustainable forest management. This project benefits from the European funding of the INTERREG IIIB programme, Atlantic area. It is the main project of the IEFC in Aquitaine and it is supported by the Conseil Régional dAquitaine for a period of three years and half. Within the framework of this project, about thirty indicators will be tested on a pilot zone with several thousands hectares centred around the area of Pontex les Forges (40). These tests will be carried out by the organisms members of the Observatoire des Forêts dAquitaine (OFORA) : the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique Pierroton, the Centre Régional de la Propriété Forestière dAquitaine, the Inventaire Forestier National, ENITAB, the CEMAGREF, AFOCEL.
- INDISFAE2: Implementation of common indicators about the perception and the satisfaction of the public and of the forest chain regarding the forest management in the Spanish Bask Country and in Aquitaine. This project is done in partnership with the University of the Bask Country and ENITAB of Bordeaux within the framework of the common funding for cooperation Aquitaine Euskadi.
- Formation Forêt et Société: the objective of this project is to implement a common education, interdisciplinary between the University of the Bask Country and ENITA of Bordeaux member of the IEFC. It is about satisfying the need of having environmental sciences in the sociology education and vice-versa from sociology to forestry.
- Monograph of the Maritime Pine: International work written by about 100 international authors and it will be published in 2006.
- International Conference: The Role of Plantation forests in the Sustainable Development Forum about the environmental products and services of the plantation forests that will take place from the 3rd to the 7th of October 2006 in Bilbao. The target of this conference will be the foresters, the forest owners, the forest stakeholders, the representatives of the national and international administrations and the scientific public. The Scientific forum is organised by the IEFC in cooperation with the project EU-NETFOP (Networking Forest Plantations in a Crowded World) trough the Forestry Institute of the Freiburg University, under the aegis of IUFRO, CIFOR and other international organisations.
- International Conference about the Indicators for the Sustainable Management that will take place from the 11th to the 13th of December 2006 in Porto, Portugal. This conference closes the FORSEE project and it is open to all the partners that have participated in this project. The evaluation of the sustainable forest management is a complex subject, because it implies that the forest management must respond to all the current needs with compromising the future generations. These indicators should cover the economic, ecological and social aspects of forestry.
This general assembly was also the occasion to discover the new logo of the IEFC that valorises the European dimension of this association. It was followed by the management council of the FORSEE project where the audit report was presented to the public financial partners. 