Enhancing policy coherence through public expenditure analysis for forests: New FAO e-learning course now available
FAO has released a new certified e-learning course, Enhancing policy coherence through public expenditure analysis for forests, designed to help countries strengthen the links between agriculture, forestry and national climate and biodiversity commitments.
Public expenditure is a powerful tool for shaping land-use decisions. Yet forest-related spending is often fragmented across sectors and institutions, limiting the ability to identify inefficiencies, repurpose harmful subsidies, or align budgets with national strategies. This new course equips learners with practical methods to analyse public expenditure on forests and use this information to support more coherent, evidence-based policymaking.
The course introduces globally recognized expenditure classification systems – including the Monitoring and Analysing Food and Agricultural Policies (MAFAP) approach, the Classification of the Functions of Government (COFOG), and the new function-based and forest-pathway, outcome-based classifications. Through two interactive lessons, participants learn how to identify, classify and assess forest-related expenditures, and how to link them to climate and biodiversity targets.
This course is intended for government officials, technical officers, analysts, development partners, researchers and students working on forestry, agriculture, environment, finance or planning. It is particularly relevant for practitioners involved in national public expenditure reviews, forest governance, sustainable finance and cross-sector policy coordination.
Upon completion and a passing grade, learners will receive a digital certification from the FAO elearning Academy.
The course has been developed with the support of the UN-REDD Programme, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan (MAFF), and the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3).
The course is available here at:
https://elearning.fao.org/course/view.php?id=1366