State of Japan’s Forests and  
                          Forest Management 
                                        
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                        ― 3  Country Report of Japan  
                          to the Montreal Process ― 
                                        
                                        
                                        
                                        
                                        
                                        
                                        
                                        
                                        
                                  July, 2019 
                                        
                           Forestry Agency, Japan 
             
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
              This  report  was  prepared  by  the  Forestry  Agency, 
          Japan to provide information on the state of its forests and 
          forest  management in  accordance with the  Criteria  and 
          Indicators of the Montreal Process. 
           
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
                              FOREWORD 
           
           
               The Montréal Process is one of the initiatives  to promote the 
          development and application of criteria and indicators for sustainable 
          forest management. Twelve major temperate and boreal forest countries, 
          including Japan, have participated in the Montréal Process, and the forest 
          area of these countries is equivalent to 50 % of the world. 
               Efforts to promote sustainable forest management have been 
          made in various forms since the agreement at the Earth Summit in 1992. 
          As a recent movement, 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which 
          are an urgent call for action by the international community by 2030, was 
          adopted at the United Nations Summit in 2015. Forests play important role 
          in achieving SDG15 “Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of 
          terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, 
          and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss”, and 
          contribute  to 14 goals such as water, energy, climate change, 
          consumption and production, etc. 
               Also, Paris Agreement, adopted at COP 21, encouraged that all 
          countries to take action to strengthen the role of forest as carbon sinks and 
          reservoirs, and also encouraged implementation and support of REDD +. 
               Meanwhile,  as forest resources mainly in artificial forests  have 
          become enriched  in Japan, the population declines  and the aging 
          progresses, and this trend is particularly intensifying in the mountain area 
          that supports the production activities of forestry. For this reason, in 
          addition to promoting the growth industrialization of forestry, stakeholders 
          decided to work together on the initiative to construct a new system for 
          appropriate forest management, and in 2018, new forest management 
          Law "was enacted, and the introduction of a new tax system was also 
          decided to secure the necessary financial resources for this. 
           
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         Based on such internal and external circumstances, the Third Country 
         Report was compiled adding new data, keeping the consistency with the 
         trends of each indicator concerning Japan's forests since the Second 
         Country Report in 2009. It is my hope that this report will widely acquaint 
         the world with the state of forests and forest management of Japan and 
         contribute to further promotion of sustainable forest management. 
          
          
          
          
                                      Koji MAKIMOTO 
                                      Director General 
                                      Forestry Agency, Japan 
                                      July 2019 
                         
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