Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

The Global Forest Observations Initiative (GFOI) invites you to attend the GFOI Plenary 2021, which will take place online from 7 to 9 September 2021, from 14:00 to 16:30 CEST each day.

This is a collaborative event organised by the GFOI Office, hosted by FAO, on behalf of GFOI's Lead partners in the Governments of Australia, Germany, Norway, the United Kingdom and the United States of America, as well as the international organizations participating in the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS), the European Space Agency (ESA), the FAO and the World Bank.

GFOI is a voluntary partnership, which aims to coordinate international support in forest monitoring. Through collaborative action, GFOI supports tropical countries to develop National Forest Monitoring Systems (NFMS) and associated emissions Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV) procedures.

The annual GFOI Plenary is the biggest event on the GFOI's calendar. It brings together the global community of practitioners who support tropical countries in forest monitoring MRV. The Plenary aims to share information and ideas, review progress and identify new opportunities for helping countries to improve their forest monitoring capabilities to enable better forest management and ultimately the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

Starting on day one the GFOI community will share their reflections from the past and what has learned from forest monitoring and MRV implementation over the past decade or more. On day two, we will then turn our minds to the present and the work of GFOI’s four components before concluding on day three with a look to the future and how the GFOI community can best support countries to meet their ongoing and emerging forest monitoring and MRV needs.

The event will include live interpretation for English, French and Spanish speakers.

Please register here.

A key pillar of the Paris Agreement is the Enhanced Transparency Framework (ETF), which aims to raise ambitions for climate action through transparent country reporting. The development of National Forest Monitoring Systems with open and transparent data can enable action for forest and climate. In light of the climate emergency, it is time to scale up efforts toward accurate, open and transparent forest data, to catalyze higher ambitions under the Paris Agreement.

The FAO webinar “Open and Transparent Forest data: Innovation and Technology for Climate Action” will highlight global and national efforts in the field of forest monitoring that support the implementation of the ETF under the Paris Agreement.

Specifically, the webinar aims to:   

• present the “Building global capacity to increase transparency in the forest sector" (CBIT-Forest)” project and its contribution to the ETF under the Paris Agreement;
• present latest digital data sources and related dissemination innovations contributing to the Paris Agreement by promoting transparency and open data, and
• share experience from Bangladesh on data management and transparency.        

The webinar will take place on Wednesday 11 November 2020, 14:30 – 16:00 CEST.

To join the webinar session on Zoom, kindly register here.

Please access further information on the webinar here.  

The Global Forest Observations Initiative (GFOI) has launched a portal - the first such comprehensive platform - to track international capacity development support to developing countries in forest monitoring for climate action.

The portal - the GFOI Inventory of Activities - is a one-stop shop with easy-to-access information on more than 400 forest monitoring activities in 70 developing countries across Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean. Users can search for information by country or region, by type of forest monitoring activities, and by donors.

"Collecting and disseminating better information on forests is vital for countries and the international community's efforts to take targeted and effective action on climate change," said Hiroto Mitsugi, FAO Assistant Director-General for Forestry.

The portal will help governments and donors identify gaps, share resources, avoid overlaps and explore opportunities for new partnerships to better address the challenges countries face as they develop their National Forest Monitoring Systems.

The portal displays information from the world's leading forest monitoring development partners, including national governments, development practitioners, space agencies and forestry experts.

It is an example of successful collaboration and open information sharing, which is essential in an era of global climate change as big geospatial data and other diverse and usable information becomes increasingly available.

You can access the portal here: http://www.fao.org/gfoi/activities?utm_source=all&utm_medium=all&utm_campaign=GFOI%20Inventory%20of%20Activities