Minister of Environment, Mr.  Hakob Simidyan accepted the delegation led by Raimund Yele, representative of the Food and Agriculture Organization of Armenia.

The delegation included Daniel Gustavso, the special representative of the Director General of FAO, Nadine Valat, the senior natural resources officer of FAO, and Nerses Kyurinian, the national coordinator of the project.

The meeting was attended by Deputy Minister Mr. Aram Meimaryan, Secretary General Mr. Sergo Atanesyan, Director of “Hayantar” SNCO Sevak Markosyan, Director of “HYDROMETEOROLOGY   AND   MONITORING   CENTER”   SNCO Mr. Levon Azizyan, Director of “Environmental Projects Implementation Unit” State Institution, Mr. Armen Esoyan, Heads of professional departments of the Ministry.

Welcoming the partners, Minister Hakob Simidyan noted that there is a wide scope of cooperation between the two structures and good examples of cooperation, which means that in the near future it is possible to implement more prospective cooperation.

Among other issues, the minister specifically referred to cooperation on the protection of forested areas, increasing their volume and competent management.

Together with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Ministry implements the program “Increasing the resilience of Armenia’s forests: promoting adaptation and green growth of rural areas through mitigation”.

The project aims to increase approximately 5,700 hectares of forest cover (2% of total forest cover added and 24% of the ISDN target), ensuring sustainable forest management for at least 135,800 hectares of forests and increasing carbon sequestration capacity by at least 18.8 metric tons of carbon (20 years). and reducing emissions by 200,000 tons of carbon (20 years).

Lori Marz in the north of Armenia and Syunik Marz in the south were selected as target areas based on the type of forests, population density and poverty level, their degree of exposure to climate change, as well as their impact on important forest ecosystems.

The program “Implementation of Land Degradation Neutralization (LDD) in Armenia through sustainable land management and restoration of degraded meadows” was also discussed.

A number of issues related to continuous cooperation were also discussed during the meeting.