Background

In the rapidly changing societies of the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean region, forestry higher education faces many great challenges. This area is among the first areas of the world where man started to practice agriculture and to actively use and pressure natural forest resources. This long-lasting and intense use of forests for timber, firewood and grazing, together with the harsh and unpredictable climate, the current difficult socio-economic conditions and the absence of adequate forest management and policy measures has led to an increasing problem of deforestation, degradation and over-exploitation of forests. This situation, common to Lebanon, Tunisia and Syria needs to be addressed because forests fulfill numerous economic, social and environmental functions crucial for the sustainable development and welfare of the rural and urban communities. Hence, the multiple functions of Mediterranean forests need to be taken into account in the decision making process of forest management and planning. In addition, many of the services provided by Mediterranean forests are external (forest externalities) to the existing markets and, hence, they also need to be clearly identified and quantified through economic methods in order to adopt suitable policy measures for their internalisation. In this context, what is needed is:

• a direct understanding and economic valuation of the full range of forest goods and services;

• multifunctional forest ecosystem management approaches, methods and tools; to ensure the conservation and sustainable management of forest resources trough adequate policy measures and optimal forest management and planning. Therefore, there is an urgent need to concentrate on the development of forestry education in those areas that provide tools for national and regional forest planning and programs design.

In the southern and eastern Mediterranean region, the long-lasting use of forests, together with the harsh and unpredictable climate, the current difficult socio-economic conditions and the absence of adequate forest management and policy measures has led to an increasing problem of deforestation, degradation and over-exploitation of forests. In this context, Higher Forestry Education in Lebanon Tunisia and Syria need to respond to these problems by upgrading and improving their teaching staff knowledge and skills as well as by developing new specialized courses to address the increasing complexity of managing and conserving Mediterranean forest ecosystems. Since Higher Forestry Education institutions in these countries have difficulties in responding individually to these emerging needs due to the lack of resources and personnel, MEDFOREM will act as a "catalyser" to mobilize more efficiently existing resources through international cooperation among partner countries and with European institutions in order to organize a new specialization course on Mediterranean Multifunctional Forest Ecosystem Management which should transfer new knowledge in key subjects, methods, tools and topics, such as forest inventory and modeling techniques, multi-objective forest planning models, forest economic methods for valuing forest goods and services, and the design and implementation of forest policies in developing countries.