EDITORIAL

(IFFN No. 25 - July 2001)

In the Editorial of the previous issue of International Forest Fire News (No. 24, April 2001) the rationale and a short overview of the FAO Forest Resources Assessment (FRA) 2000 had been presented. The report "FAO Global Forest Fire Assessment: 1990-2000" of the FRA 2000, prepared for the FAO by the Global Fire Monitoring Center (GFMC) and Fire Management Applications (USA), has been finalised recently by the FAO. The report summarises the results of questionnaires and contacts with countries to obtain wildfire data and narrative information regarding the fire situation in the 1990s. The report is organised according to FAO's six geographical regions: Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania, North and Central America and South America. In-depth fire situation profiles or short overviews are presented for 59 countries. Much of the information was either prepared by the correspondents of International Forest Fire News (IFFN), including the IFFN archive, and the GFMC or taken from the IFFN archive.

If printed the first global fire report would comprise of more than 530 pages. Thus FAO opted for publication on CD ROM (available ca. September 2001) and additionally on the FAO Website. Since a large number of country profiles has been authored by IFFN/GFMC correspondents most of the full reports will be published in the IFFN issues 23 to 26. The readers of IFFN are kindly reminded that all 72 IFFN forest fire country notes that have been collected between 1990 and 2000 are accessible in the GFMC archive on the Internet:

  http://www.ruf.uni-freiburg.de/fireglobe/iffn/country/country.htm.

This IFFN issue provides an Africa Fire Special, the second after IFFN No. 19 (September 1999). Besides the most recent updates from ten African countries a special focus is on the fire programme in Namibia. Dedicated reports cover (i) the Namibia-Finland Forestry Programme, (ii) an evaluation of the Integrated Forest Fire Management Programme on Rural Livelihoods in East Caprivi Region, and (iii) the results of the Namibia Round Table on Fire that has been conducted in Windhoek, 10-11 November 1999, with the support of the GFMC. The National Guidelines on Forest Fire Management in Namibia merit special attention and are therefore provided in full length. The National Guidelines have been developed by closely viewing at the ITTO Guidelines on Fire Management in Tropical Forests. The Namibian guidelines suggest to analyse how and to what extent the ITTO guidelines are applicable to Namibia.

In the coming years the fire problems in Africa will deserve to receive more attention from by the international community. At present a large number of African countries has only limited capabilities in fire management and access to sources of information and technologies. During the recent years it has been observed that economic constraints, unstable political conditions and wars, and often a lack of public or governmental commitment have led to a decline of capabilities to proactively address fire problems both at the academic and management levels. On the other hand, the African continent provides a wealth of experience of successful integration of people in community-based forest and fire management systems. In addition there is abundant expertise in the use of fire in ecosystem management in Africa which unfortunately is missing appropriate application.

Recognising the shortcomings of information and proper fire management training in most of Subsahara Africa the GFMC has received funding from the German government for compiling a systematic approach to fire management south of the Sahara. The book volume Fire Management Handbook for Subsahara Africa, a joint effort of the GFMC and SILVA Forest Services, Bredasdorp (South Africa), is currently in its final production stage and will be announced soon.

Post Scriptum

Another major synthesis has been published this month. The Fire Group within the Global Observation of Forest Cover (GOFC) under the Committee of Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) has done its homework. A dedicated book volume Global and Regional Vegetation Fire Monitoring from Space: Planning a Coordinated International Effort synthesises and analyses the state of the art of remote sensing for operational and scientific purposes, and for policy support. Information on that publication is found at the end of this issue of IFFN. The contributions of the book were initially presented at a GOFC Fire Workshop held at the Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy. The volume is a contribution by the GOFC Forest Fire Monitoring and Mapping Implementation Team to the Interagency Task Force, Working Group on Wildland Fire of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR).

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