Lebanon National Forest Program (2015-2025).

The Lebanese National Forest Program, consisting of eight Chapters, is a plan of actions that defines the government’s role in the forestry sector and ensures the coordination and cooperation mechanisms among all public and private sectors. The present program represents the outcome of an intensive participatory process. Its content was built over different sectors taking into account the various priorities and interests. It draws on a long-term vision and mission as well as a set of the guiding principles tapping on international strategic goals in relation to forest and rangeland management and conservation, community participation exercises, and existing national policies and strategies. Based on the threats, pressure and priority actions to ensure the successful development of the forestry sector, the vision and mission were developed in close partnership with all stakeholders involved in the formulation of the NFP. These were finalized based on researchers and practitioners insights. Its vision aims at sustainably managing forest resources, safeguarding ecological integrity, economic development and social thrive for the benefit of present and future generations. Its mission is to ensure the restoration, development and resiliency of forest ecosystems, aiming at enhanced economic growth, poverty alleviation, and biodiversity conservation, while supporting innovative participatory approach to heighten the well-being of Lebanese citizens.
The NFP includes seven chapters presented in a logical framework from introducing the context and methodology, the need of an NFP, mission and vision, targets, activities and indicators as well as timeline and monitoring progress of work. The Program is divided as follows: Overview and goal of NFP: an introductory chapter providing a general background and overview on the importance of Lebanese forests in the regional context and at national level and the need for an NFP and identifying the responsible for its elaboration (Chap. I); Methodology and Presentation of the NFP: it describes the approaches adopted summarized in three tasks and the process of development in ten steps shedding the light on the participatory approaches at local and national levels. This chapter also describes the thematic threshold of the NFP (Chap. II); Forest Resources and Governance Assessment: it gives a synthetic description of Lebanon’s forest land and sector involved based on the international criteria and indicators of SFM scheme. It explores the concrete national/regional situation of Lebanon and the assessment of the forestry sector by providing a comprehensive description (Chap. III); Operational Objectives: it describes the operational objectives based on the existing resources and MoA stand point in terms of management as well the challenges and opportunities this sector is facing. The operational objectives were defined to be realistic and achievable with the implementation of NFP action plan (Chap. IV); Program of Action: it compiles the activities needed to achieve the operational objectives based on the set NFP general objectives. Activities are concrete as much as possible and paired with a identifying the partners and defining the national competent authorities as well as partners (public and private bodies) (Chap. V); Budget and Calendar: it provides detailed information about the timeline of the implementation of the defined activities, the budget defined into the time period of the NFP and the timetable of the intervention in relation to the monitoring of progress of work (Chap. VI); Follow-up system: it presents in details the evaluation process including monitoring the progress of work following the defined set of targets, action plan and budget while using the indicators identified (Chap. VII).