The following are potential areas of focus for the early period of APFNet:
- Development of forest policies and programs
- Economic incentives for sustainable forest management and forest rehabilitation, including payments for ecosystem services
- Strengthening forest-related institutions and facilitating forest institutional reforms, such as clarifying property rights arrangements
- Forest inventory, monitoring and assessment, including “criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management”
- Forests and climate change, including resilience of forest ecosystems to global warming.
- Forest rehabilitation technologies and approaches
- Improving forest quality and health, including forest fire and pest diseases and control
- Strengthening forest law enforcement and governance, including tackling illegal logging and associated trade
- Forest management technologies at the management unit level
- Development of community-based forest enterprises
- Conservation of forest biodiversity
- Enhancement of private-public partnerships and corporate social responsibility
- Strengthening public awareness raising and information dissemination on SFM