GFOI Partners the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Bank's Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) will work together to strenghten the accessibility and accuracy of forest monitoring systems in developing countries.

FAO and the FCPF will create professional training and guidance material to increase the uptake of FAO's innovative forest monitoring platform SEPAL 2.1. The platform allows users to produce accurate data on forest and land cover, including estimates of forest carbon, essential for informing climate action and has recently been empowered with access to critical Planet Labs data. Training activities will include manuals, practice videos, webinars and global workshops on the use of the platform.

FAO will also work with four FCPF participant countries in Africa to identify gaps and needs in their national forest monitoring systems, which serve as a basis for measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) for REDD+. The specific needs of Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana and Zambia will be identified and communicated following the Global Forest Observations Initiative's (GFOI) Country Needs Assessment (CNA) process. The CNA process draws on the online resources of the REDDCompass for guidance.

A South-South exchange will take place in early 2020 at FAO in Rome. Representatives from Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Indonesia, Mexico, and Mozambique will gather together for a hands-on training session on the use of Planet Labs data to increase accuracy in monitoring of forest cover change.

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