Preserving Turkish forests

With 22.3 million hectares of forest, Turkey has one the largest forest coverage in Europe and enjoys a particularly rich biodiversity. Forest plays an important role in the economic activity of rural areas and in the income of forest villagers. It also plays a major role in the preservation of public goods, serving the country and its population way beyond its administrative perimeter. The Turkish government is engaged in an ambitious policy aiming at reaching forest coverage of 30% nationwide by 2023, while improving the quality of its forest policy and converging towards the European norms.

This project aims at extending the cooperation for sustainable forest management, with a special focus on the sustainability of Turkish forest with two main objectives: 

• Improving the strategic integration of the fight against climate change in the Turkish forest policy, both in terms of mitigation and adaptation.
• Supporting an increased integration of biodiversity and eco-systemic services in the forest policy.

Several activities have been launched in close cooperation with the Turkish authorities, covering 3 complementary objectives:

• Securing budgetary allocations targeted to OGM investments with strong climate co-benefits in mitigation and adaptation
• Promoting the cooperation on subjects of shared interest where French expertise in biodiversity and climate can contribute to supporting the Turkish forest sustainability such as: development of forest inventory, improving the carbon assessment, plant genetics, pest control, ecotourism, quarry rehabilitation, forest certification
• Promoting an increased integration of climate change and biodiversity protection throughout the institution.

This long-term project combining technical cooperation and policy-based loans has had major impacts since 2011. Turkey's forest cover has increased from 27% to almost 29.4%, i.e. by more than 1 million hectares. In 2018, the increase in the surface and quality of forests contributed to decrease the country's greenhouse gas emissions by 16%. A forest management strategy for climate change adaptation has also been prepared for beyond 2023.

Other concrete impacts include: drafting of a roadmap on the integration of biodiversity in forest management, development of sustainable solutions to fight parasites (laboratory, traps, biological pesticides), improvement of forest inventory methods, two pilot sites for the development of ecotourism, etc.