Marshall Islands Forest Action Plan 2020-2030

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Marshall Islands Forest Action Plan 2020-2030

This Forest Action Plan identifies the RMI’s highest priorities for forest resource management and needs for assistance from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service (USFS). State assessments and resource strategies are integral to the Forest Service’s State and Private Forestry (S&PF) redesign and required as an amendment to the Cooperative Forestry Assistance Act (CFAA), as enacted in the 2008 Farm Bill. Each “State” was required to complete a State-Wide Assessment and Resource Strategy (SWARS) within two years after enactment of the 2008 Farm Bill (June 18, 2008) to receive funds under CFAA. The 2008 Farm Bill also made the Republic of the Marshall Islands eligible for CFAA programs that are available to states, territories and commonwealths of the USA. The SWARS developed in 2010 for the RMI required updating in 2020, and is now known as the Forest Action Plan (FAP).

The RMI FAP includes two components of the assessment and planning required by the S&PF Redesign approach to identify priority forest landscape areas and highlight work needed to address national, regional, and state forest management priorities:

Statewide Forest Resource Assessment —provides an analysis of forest conditions and trends in the state and delineates priority rural and urban forest landscape areas.

Statewide Forest Resource Strategy—provides long-term strategies for investing state, federal, and other resources to manage priority landscapes identified in the assessment, focusing where federal investment can most effectively stimulate or leverage desired action and engage multiple partners.

The RMI FAP summarizes information from other existing assessments and strategic plans; details may be found in those existing documents.

The FAP provides a basis for subsequent annual grant proposals, as authorized under several CFAA programs. The redesign deemphasized program-by-program planning and emphasized program integration to meet island priorities. The original 2010 RMI SWARS was thus organized around the Marshalls’ own priority issues with respect to forests. Issues were defined by the advisory group to the “state” forester of the Marshall Islands as a way of organizing the goals and strategies most relevant to the forest resources of the RMI. “Cross-cutting considerations” were also recognized by the advisory group, as threats, constraints and limitations that affected more than one issue.

These priority issues and cross-cutting considerations were revisited and revised for the 2020 update of the Forest Action Plan by relevant stakeholder groups detailed in Section III through a process that involved a desktop review, workshop, and individual consultations. One cross-cutting consideration described in the original plan, ‘capacity-building’, was replaced with ‘data collection, management, and analysis’ in 2020 as being critical to carrying out RMI’s objectives. Capacity building is still important, required for all issues, and mentioned throughout the assessment and strategies.