The National Forest Institute (Instituto Nacional de Bosques - INAB) and the Protected Areas National Council (Consejo Nacional de Áreas Protegidas - CONAP) of Guatemala, with the support of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), have finalized the methodological and technological tools for implementing the second National Forest Inventory of Guatemala.

The objective of the National Forest Inventory is to determine the current state of the goods and services of forests and trees outside forests at the national level, by way of a comprehensive and multi-purpose evaluation that is replicable and provides strategic information for the country.

“The second NFI is important in order to update information on our forest resources, to improve knowledge of the sector, to support the monitoring of forest policy, and to respond to international commitments - such as reporting the country’s progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and in applying sustainable forest management or enhancing forest carbon stocks through forest restoration” said engineer Rony Granados, manager of INAB, who also explained that the first inventory was conducted more than 17 years ago, in 2002-2003.

The NFI involves the establishment of permanent measurement plots distributed randomly throughout the national territory from where qualitative and quantitative information will be collected and used to calculate the timber and non-timber productive potential of forests, the biomass and the carbon stored (above and below-ground biomass as well as soil carbon), tree health, biodiversity, current land use, and uses that people are making of the forest and tree resources. The departments of Petén, Alta Verapaz, Izabal, Quiché and Huehuetenango have the most measurement plots, as they are the largest.

“The launch of the NFI is a milestone for Guatemala because it is a collaborative process led by the two government institutions in charge of the country’s forest resources. The information generated will be highly important for CONAP for monitoring the Biodiversity National Strategy and the status of timber tree species under CITES” said Abraham Estrada, Executive Secretary of CONAP.

As part of the support to the design, planning and execution of this second inventory the FAO representative in Guatemala - Ricardo Rapallo - delivered the documents of the Methodological Framework, the Field Manual and a high-capacity server for the implementation of the NFI. He also stated that “As a member state of the FAO countries network, Guatemala receives the support to improve the quality of life of its people, and the National Forest Inventory constitutes an indispensable planning tool for mitigation and adaptation actions on climate change and to improve forest-related livelihoods”. He added “with this project, Guatemala is placed on the worldwide list of countries with updated  information on their forest resources. The NFI is a national project, thus FAO encourages the government and the forestry and environmental organizations to work collaboratively to obtain on this information”.

The estimated cost of implementation of Guatemala’s second NFI is around USD 1 million . Given the importance of the project, various organizations and projects are engaged, including FAO, the Forestry Consortium of Guatemala, the Faculty of Agronomy of the University of San Carlos (FAUSAC), the project “Promoting sustainable and resilient territories in landscapes of the central volcanic mountain chain of Guatemala”, the Association of Forest Communities of Petén (ACOFOP), and Silvacarbon.

Considering that the field phase of the inventory will begin in January 2021 and end the same year, resource availability to the lead institutions of the project will be vital during this period, as well as the inputs of local, national and international collaborators.

The original version (in Spanish) of this news article is available at: http://www.fao.org/guatemala/noticias/detail-events/es/c/1330848/

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