Cooperation agreement between the French National Forestry Offices (ONF) and Turkish (GMO) Turquie, France

Context of the service

A Cooperation Agreement on Climate Change and Forests was signed between the Turkish Ministry of Environment and Forestry and AFD in 2009. On this basis, AFD wanted to support Turkey's actions in terms of climate change mitigation in the forestry sector, with the granting of a concessional loan of €150 million over two years.
To materialize this support and operationalize it, AFD has encouraged the establishment of cooperation between the Turkish Forest Service (Orman Genel Müdürlügü, OGM) and the National Forestry Office (ONF).
GMOs are a heavyweight in the pan-European forest landscape: it manages more than 21 Mha of forests, 99% of which are public (i.e. the 4th largest pan-European forest area after Sweden, Finland and metropolitan and overseas France) and employs 35,000 agents, including 11,000 for forest fire fighting services alone (in comparison, the NFB employs 9,000 officers, including 250 responsible for fighting forest fires).
The GMO generates each year a turnover of more than 700 M€ with the sale of wood and reforests each year more than 300,000 ha of forest on degraded land, making Turkey the 3rd country in the world in terms of reforested areas after China and India!

Services provided

A joint GMO-AFD-ONF-ONFI mission, which took place in Ankara, identified 18 concrete areas of cooperation on the following themes:
- Adaptation of forestry to climate change,
- Forest carbon storage (carbon sinks),
- Forest inventories,
- Forest Geographic Information Systems,
- Fighting forest fires,
- Restoration of mountain land,
- Legality and traceability of timber,
- Eco-certification,
- Biomass energy.
For all these themes and areas of collaboration, the expert prepared presentations on the strengths/weaknesses of the NFB's expertise in this area, in order to identify, jointly with GMO partners, avenues for technical cooperation and to detail them as precisely as possible.
The mission was fruitful and made it possible to prepare the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between GMOs and ONF and the establishment of GMO-ONF cooperation.

Summary of the service

Preparation of a Cooperation Agreement between the French (ONF) and Turkish (GMO) National Forestry Offices: Cross-presentation of the competences of the ONF and the GMO; Identification of areas of scientific and technical cooperation (GIS, database management, forest fire fighting, promotion of biomass energy, rehabilitation of degraded land, etc.); Preparation of the ONF-GMO Cooperation Agreement for the granting of €150 million in concessional loans.