Welcome address

Don-Koo Lee^[1]

Dato’ Dr Abdul Razak, Director-General of the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia (FRIM) as well as President of the Asia Pacific Association of Forestry Research Institutions (APAFRI), Dr Appanah from FAO, Professor Nagata Shin from the University of Tokyo, Ms Fiona Chandler from ICRAF, Dr Rebugio from the University of Philippines at Laos Banõs, Dr Suhardi from the Gajah Mada University, Professor Youn Yeo Chang from the Seoul National University, distinguished and honorable participants, ladies and gentlemen, I bid you all a warm welcome to Korea and this Workshop.

I am so pleased that the Seoul National University and the Northeast Asian Forest Forum are hosting the International Workshop on “Forests for Poverty Reduction: Opportunities with Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), Environmental Services and Biodiversity,” and I would like to extend my sincere appreciation to all the participants for taking their time to attend this meeting, especially speakers and moderators for their valuable inputs and contributions to today’s Workshop.

It is forests that give us fresh water and clean air as well as fertilize the soil to produce food, energy and biomass. Forests are also a major carbon sink that mitigates climate change. In other words, forests are the source of life and play an important role in the preservation of our fragile environment. In the past, we have been working mainly on the rehabilitation of degraded forest land, but it has often been ignored by the poor rural communities. It is realized that the rural poor can also play a more effective role in forest protection and conservation of biodiversity while they benefit from the forest resources which they have protected.

There have been a series of discussions on how to use forests in reducing rural poverty. In this sense, international communities are looking into how new global initiatives such as CDM and carbon credits can be directed to benefit rural populations as well as ecological services and biodiversity conservation. Without improving the living standard of the forest communities, it will be nearly impossible to stop the deterioration of forests and deforestation in this Asian region. For this reason, it is specially meaningful to hold this Workshop to identify valuable opportunities in CDM, carbon markets and related forest services that can be converted to benefit rural populations.

I sincerely hope that today’s Workshop will provide a forum for countries to identify the approaches and strategies for reducing rural poverty as well as to understand the current knowledge and developments of CDM, carbon markets and the economic value of ecological services and biodiversity conservation.

I wish you all a fruitful Workshop and an enjoyable and healthy stay in Korea.

Finally, I would like to thank FAO, APAFRI, the Seoul National University, and the Korea Forest Economics Society for organizing this timely Workshop. I am also grateful to the Korea Forest Service and Yuhan-Kimberly for sponsoring this Workshop and to all others who have contributed to make this Workshop possible and successful.