Monrovia- The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) through the project “Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Forest Degradation- REDD+” continues to make significant strides in strengthening countries capacity in combating Climate Change.

Implementing the REDD+ initiative with technical support from FAO is a clear commitment by the government of Liberia to reducing carbon dioxide emissions as the result of deforestation and forest degradation which is a global commitment signed by countries including Liberia at the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

At a weeklong capacity enrichment exercise organized by FAO through the collaborative efforts of the Forestry Development Authority (FDA) under the REDD+ initiative, Isaac Nyaneyon Kannah, Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) Officer of REDD+ Unit described the project as “War against Climate Change”.

He said the project was designed to particularly help combat Climate Change. “The overall concept of this project is reducing the emission of carbon dioxide that are causing climate change”. He also said climate change is a global problem that need a collective approach. 

He mentioned that integrated approaches to land use that will balance agricultural needs for production and food security with the sustainable management and conservation of forests, and, at the same time, make the most of any climate change mitigation is essential.

Mr. Kannah informed that as part of the initiative, FDA remains grateful to FAO for providing technical support to the Liberia forest sector project. He called on national government to put in place the necessary policies to stop deforestation adding that forest is one of the key sources of production. 

The training was facilitated by two forest experts from FAO Headquarters in Roma, Italy, Javier Garcia Perez and Yelena Finegold.

Concluding the one week exercise, Javier Garcia Perez urged participants to take advantage of the opportunity so that when FAO and other partners exit, they as technicians can continue to reap the result-based reward of participation.

Mr. Garcia Perez said the REDD+ programme will continue to play vital role at the global level to strengthen countries capacity to better protect, manage and monitor their forests, to advance forest-related investment in partners countries and to support strategies and market access for forest deforestation- free agriculture commodities as measure to halt deforestation.

The one week interactions highlighted two topics, Estimation of Emission Factors and the Forest Cover Change Analysis.

Approximately over thirty (30) technicians from the Forestry Development Authority and the Liberia Institute of Statistics and Geo-Information Services (LISGIS) participated in the weeklong exercise.

The first session of the training on Estimation of Emission Factors enable the data management team to acquire a broader knowledge on the use of Open Foris Collect for the forest inventory estimation process of the emission factors; it reviews the estimation process to identify potential processing decisions, in advance of the upcoming field data collection in Priority Area 2 of the project and the rest of the country; as well as conduct a joint meeting with team leaders to identify the joint combination of emission factors and activity data.

At the same time, the second session took participants through the process of analyzing the sample data and generating activity data estimates. The resulting stratified area assessment will be facilitated using a combination of Collect Earth and SEPAL tools. A review of remote sensing functionalities in SEPAL will be presented for forest monitoring, including mosaicking and image classification that will enable autonomous data access and processing.