Achim Steiner

Acting on the nomination of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the UN General Assembly unanimously elected Achim Steiner as the Executive Director of UNEP on 16 March 2006 for a four-year term, effective 15 June 2006. He becomes the fifth Executive Director in UNEP's history. Effective 1 March 2009, Achim was also appointed Director-General of the UN Offices at Nairobi (UNON).

Climate change and biodiversity loss have brought forests to the attention of the international community in previously unprecedented ways.

Indeed, the growing evidence of the multitrillion dollar value of forest ecosystems, alongside other values, including cultural and spiritual, has reframed and reshaped both the debate and invest¬ment policies of increasing numbers of public and private actors.

The large majority of terrestrial biodiversity has formed in the world’s forests, and many of the world’s largest cities are depen-dent on forest-filtered water from tree-covered mountains and hills, providing services to hundreds of millions of people. For the 1.6 billion people that depend on forests for their daily livelihoods – or the various industries that rely on timber or other forest pro-ducts for their businesses – it is imperative that forest destruction is halted and reversed.

Spotlighting the inordinate, valuable services provided by forests is one way of bringing them into the fore of sustainable develop¬ment. It is clear that forests, along with other ecosystems, under¬pin all human well-being. They are very much the ‘GDP of the poor’ and are central to achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

However, we are destroying forests at an alarming rate, without paying attention to the medium- and long-term consequences of our quest for short-term gains.

The International Year of Forests offers a golden opportunity to fast-track a wide range of positive initiatives and programmes that address multiple challenges, from climate change to the loss of the richness of the world’s wildlife, and the importance in generating jobs in sustainable resource management.

I applaud the various governmental leaders, local communities, civil society organizations, artists and private companies that have acknowledged the pivotal role of forests and capitalise on this in their everyday decision making.

I also encourage countries and people across the world to follow this lead and use the new optimism and positive examples sur¬rounding forests to catalyse long-lasting and transformative solu¬tions. UNEP is committed and ready to support this work.