Global forestry education guidance and monitoring: how imperative is it?

The forester’s job has transformed from managing forests to applying a wide range of skills to respond to the needs of forestry st akeholders and contextualize their demand for products and services from trees and fore sts that are different landscapes and owned/managed by a wide range of people and institutions. This requires very different knowledge and skills from the kind currently imparted by schools of forestry. Today’s forester is constantly challenged to remain professionally relevant in a very dynamic environment, and there are no simple reference resources. Worldwide, there is a decline of enrolment in forestry education, particularly since the 1990’s. The reasons are various, but can be summed up as failure to adequately respond to rapidly changing social, economic and political environments. The erstwhile Advisory Committee on Forestry Education (ACFE) provided good guidance on forestry ed ucation since its formation in 1956 until it ceased to exist in 1996, at a time it was badly needed. A historical analysis of its work is presented here with a view to coalescing ideas on how to re-orient forestry education to meet the emerging demands on the professi on. Despite the materialization of new education programmes covering areas of environment, biodiversity and integrated natural resources management, forestry remains critical to sustained productivity and conservation, hence the need to refocus forestry training to make it more responsive to ever changing societal demands worldwide. It is argued that there is a need to re-establish a global forestry education advisory mechanism to provide guidance to forestry schools in evolving ever-relevant traini ng to fill this lacuna.

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