Tropical forest countries have been developing national forest monitoring systems (NFMSs) for many years now. With the support of the international community, impressive progress has been made in building the technical aspects of these systems to establish emissions baselines and report results from emissions reduction efforts. To sustain and further build upon this progress, a concerted effort is necessary to institutionalize these systems and apply them to a broader range of national needs such as informing forest management decisions, policy development, and climate action. To enable this, countries need to activate their own national planning and coordination processes, similar to what they use to sustain other national programmes and institutions.
To support the embedding of NFMSs within national institutions, Country-Led Planning (CLP) was launched in 2023 by the Global Forest Observations Initiative (GFOI).
Its objective is to support motivated countries with identifying a coherent sequence of steps to operationalize and sustain their NFMS within national institutions. A key premise of this process is that it is country-led and is unique to each country’s circumstances.
There are two streams within the CLP initiative: (i) “CLP Process”, which is country-led, and (ii) “CLP Programme of Support (Programme)”, which is delivered by GFOI partners to assist motivated countries with initiating and progressing through the CLP Process. The CLP Process will help countries to strengthen the functional and technical capacities of these systems for long-term sustainability.
The GFOI’s CLP initiative is organized in seven steps:
A country is identified through self-nomination or nomination by a GFOI partner.
With GFOI partners and key resources of information, country representatives are identified. The country is officially notified by the GFOI Secretariat. Fundamentals of the NFMS, resources and policies are outlined with country representatives.
An analysis of the country’s institutional arrangements, motivating factors, technical parameters, existing planning processes and any other information give the process the greatest likelihood for success.
An in-country meeting with a multidisciplinary team of functional and technical experts engages the country’s technical and decision-making officials on the CLP workflow, timeline and deliverables.
Country officials reinforce their interagency coordination for continuous improvement and strengthen their strategic planning and advocacy capacities for domestic resource allocation and concerted international support.
Annual forums with motivated countries follow up on the initiated gap analyses and improvement plans, inspire from other active CLP processes, foster South-South exchange and incentivize progress.
Experts in functional arrangements and technical requirements are made available to boost countries’ progress and overcome challenges as needed. Support is provided via online meetings, in-country visits or fit-for-purpose workshops.
The below listed countries have been endorsed to initiate the CLP by the GFOI Leads:
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23/10
2025
Location: Bangli room
The Global Forest Observations Initiative (GFOI) held the second session of its online series of “Connect and reflect” virtual forums for Country-Led Planning (CLP) on 18 September 2025. The theme of this second forum was “Enabling factors for CLP implementation: Exploring the minimum conditions and key elements to launch and sustain the CLP process at the national level”.
The GFOI Office, hosted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), has secured funding for the GFOI’s CLP programme under FAO’s AIM4Forests programme, funded by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland's Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.
Countries, as well as other interested parties, are encouraged to contact the GFOI Office at [email protected] to learn more about the CLP initiative.
