Several multilateral environmental agreements relate to forests (e.g. Convention on Biological Diversity, Framework Convention on Climate Change, Ramsar Convention, World Heritage Convention, etc.), but so far their interrelationship is not synergistic.

The challenge of finding synergy is an important one in its own right, but has become all the more urgent given the recent establishment of the UN Forum on Forests. This project seeks to derive recommendations on how to enhance synergy by examining the issue at the global, EU and national level. To examine the implementation issues in a manner that allows a broad-based examination of all relevant MEAs, case studies have been conducted in the United Kingdom, Hungary, and Mauritania. An international expert workshop was held in Berlin on 7-8 December 2000, which considered and developed recommendations.