Forest Europe Uzmanlar Toplantısı-4/5 Haziran 2024

Forest Europe haylidir takip ettiğim bir süreç. Uzmanlar toplantısı Bakanlar Konferansından sonraki en önemli karar alma organı. Aslında burada alınan kararlar Bakanların onayına sunuluyor.

En son 2008 yılında Oslo‘da düzenlenen Uzmanlar Toplantısına Orman Genel Müdürlüğü adına aktılmıştım.

2024 yılı 1/2 Kasım tarihlerinde düzenlenecek 9. Bakanlar Konferansı öncesi 4-5 Haziran 2024 tarihlerinde Almanya’da “Uzmanlar- Expert Level Meeting” düzenlenecek.

Bundan sonrasına gelen mail üzerinden devam etmek daha uygun sanki.

Dear signatories and observers of the FOREST EUROPE process, dear colleagues,

We have the pleasure to invite you to our second Expert Level Meeting (ELM) in 2024 in Freising, near Munich. We would like to thank the Bavarian State Institute of Forestry (LWF) and the Technical University Munich for their generous hospitality.

We decided together with the General Coordinating Committee (GCC) to organize again a physical-only meeting as the primary focus of this second ELM in 2024 is to finalize and approve the Bonn Ministerial documents. This would be more difficult with an online or a hybrid meeting.

May we kindly remind you of the written procedure, which we started with mail of 19 February 2024. We hope you will thereby consider the discussions and agreements reached during our first ELM in Bonn (9/10 January 2024).

The Liaison Unit Bonn, with the guidance of the GCC, will aim to resolve outstanding issues raised during the written procedure before sending you version 3 of the documents by mid May 2024. With this way forward, we are leaving hopefully only a few outstanding issues to be discussed and solved in Freising. It is essential to note that no substantive changes can be made after June 5, 2024, once the ELM approves the Ministerial documents, as we will need to send the final documents on time to all Ministers responsible for forestry in the FOREST EUROPE process.

The ELM will start on Tuesday, 4^th June 2024, at 9 am and conclude on Wednesday, 5^th June, at lunchtime. Following the ELM, LWF extends an invitation to an interesting excursion on forest adaptation to climate change in order to increase their resilience, ensuring that you will reach Munich airport around 5.30 latest by 6 pm on 5^th June to reach your evening flights (or trains from Munich central station). We recommend combining your participation at the ELM with a visit to Munich, the charming capital of Bavaria. You can find suitable hotel room suggestions here https://www.muenchen.de/en/home or explore any online platform.

As a special invitation, we would like to invite you for dinner on 4^th June 2024, at the oldest still active brewery in the world, Weihenstephan (for further information visit https://www.weihenstephaner.de/). Especially for this evening, it might be more convenient that you book your hotel in Freising, as we will need the time to finalise our negotiations on the documents and as the trip by train to Munich downtown takes approx. 30 min from Freising train station.

More information on hotel contingents reserved for you in Freising will be given in the annex. We have also attached a short description on how to reach Freising with public transport.

Please register for the ELM before 10^th May 2024, using this registration link: https://elmfreising.eventbrite.fi

We kindly invite our signatories from countries in transition to contact liaisonunitbonn@foresteurope.org before 30^th April 2024, to inquire about potential reimbursement of travel costs.

Please find attached the annotated draft agenda. We will send you all other meeting documents including the version 3 of the Ministerial documents latest by 10 May 2024. The ELM will be conducted in English only.

It might be also helpful for your preparation to receive enclosed the final minutes of our last ELM in Bonn (9/10 January 2024). Thanks to UNECE and Switzerland for their suggestions for improvement.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us

We appreciate your continuous support, and we are looking forward to meeting you in Freising in June

Dear participants of the Expert Level Meeting, dear colleagues and friends,

First of all, many thanks for your active participation at our meeting in Freising on 4 and 5 June. We especially thank those colleagues who took a challenging trip to this place due to the heavy floods in Southern Germany. Special thanks go to our host, the Bavarian Institute for Forestry with its President, Dr. Pröbstle, to the Technical University of Munich for their willingness to provide the meeting room with a beautiful terrace to the forest district of Freising for the very interesting excursion and to all of you for your very constructive contributions. 

We are all delighted that we could adopt the Bonn Ministerial documents with its annexes in a spirit of consensus. Please find attached the final version of the documents. Please remember that they will still undergo a linguistic check and layouting. It is foreseen that we will send the final documents to the signatories before the start of the summer break for preparation towards the Ministerial Conference. More information will be provided soon.

Please find enclosed the draft minutes of our meeting. If you would like to amend the minutes for improvements, please react before 19 June 2024 to liaisonunitbonn@foresteurope.org.

We have also prepared a folder with all the presentations given at the ELM, here is the link. You can also download some of the pictures taken during the meeting here.

Please also remember to send your contribution for the implementation report to LUBo (extended deadline 30 June 2024). For more information see our email 19 February 2024. 

We also hope that the positive outcome of the ELM will serve as an additional motivation for your minister or high-level representative to register for the 9th Ministerial Conference, deadline 30 June 2024 (see instructions sent via email on 20 March 2024). We remind you once more that the deadline to reserve your rooms at the Steigenberger Hotel Petersberg at the agreed reference rate ends 1 July 2024. 

If you have any questions, please contact Silvia Abruscato (silvia.abruscato@foresteurope.org) or send an email to liaisonunitbonn@foresteurope.org. 

We will send this information to all signatories and observer organisations in a separate email.   

I would like to thank you once again on behalf of the whole LUBo/EFI FE team for your continuous support.  

with best wishes

Thomas Haußmann(Head of the Liaison Unit Bonn)