The meeting was opened by Mr Ahmed Ridha Fekih Salem, Managing Director of Forests in Tunisia who welcomed the participants. He thanked FAO for its competence and its involvement in the promotion of a forestry more and more adapted to each country and for its implementing strategies for rational management of natural resources taking into account the needs of the population. He stressed the importance of the FOSA study for Tunisia and the whole sub-region.
Mr Mustapha Sinaceur, the FAO Representative in Tunisia sent his regards to the participants, on behalf of all the FAO members. After a short review of the context of the FOSA study, Mr Sinaceur emphasised the integration of the study to the main concern - food security for the world's population. A world-wide day of recognition of that theme was celebrated on October 16. After a review of the meeting objectives, the strong involvement of the countries through its national representatives was congratulated and a reinforcement of relationships encouraged.
Mr Guido Castellano, on behalf of the Delegation of the European Community in Tunisia, briefly summed up the activities conducted in the country in favour of sectors such as rural development, the environment, forestry, promotion of local species (such as date palm etc...).
Mr Castellano underlined the European Community's strong concern, related to all the forestry projects that are ongoing in the region.
Mr Jean Louis Blanchez, FOSA coordinator, ended this opening ceremony by reminding the participants of the project orientation and organisation. The excellent results, already obtained and the necessity to deepen the prospective part of the documents were noted. He recalled the objective of the meeting: not only to assess the national reports but also to try to identify the "strong signals" and the "weak signals" that would influence the forestry development which are to be taken into account for the work of the outlook.
Finally he emphasised the sub-regional analytic approach.
Mr Blanchez defined the science called "prospective" and recalled the usefulness of the method for the FOSA project, as well as its characteristics. He ended his presentation on the prospective method by stating two goals to be reached before the end of the meeting, i.e. to manage to identify at least 3 strong signals and 5 weak signals that will likely affect the forestry sector at the sub-regional level.
