The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is pleased to invite Indigenous Peoples’ organizations and relevant partners to contribute to the Global Survey on Indigenous Peoples’ Restoration and Monitoring.

FAO has launched a new digital publication, Transparency in practice: Country experiences using Open Foris for climate reporting, which explores how countries are using free and open-source digital solutions to improve forest and land-use data for climate reporting.

Over 170 students, researchers, academics and professionals from 36 countries joined the FAO Technical Lecture Series session on “Open Foris: Democratizing open-source forest and land monitoring”, reflecting strong interest in how reliable data, digital technologies and open-source solutions can support evidence-based decision-making for forests, land use and climate action. The session attracted participants from across the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region, including strong engagement from Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, as well as other countries in Southeast Asia, alongside representation from FAO’s Youth Forest Champions.

Latin America and the Caribbean are home to more than 880 million hectares of forest, representing 21% of the world's forest cover and 47% of the region's land area. Of this total, 81% is located in the Amazon region, 10% in Mesoamerica and the Caribbean, and 9% in the Southern Cone. According...

On June 9, 2026, the Department of Agriculture and Environment, in coordination with relevant agencies and units, organized a training session on the use of the Open Forest Ground software tool to support the collection of data on cultivated areas, ensuring compliance with the European Union's regulations on the production and trade of non-deforestation products (EUDR).

Around the Amazonian city of Iquitos — the most populated city in the Peruvian Amazon — lie some of the largest and best-preserved tropical peatlands on the planet. These complex and little-understood ecosystems, known locally as chupaderas, store enormous amounts of carbon and support the livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples' communities. Although they cover only around 5 percent of Peru’s territory, some studies suggest that they store as much carbon below ground as all the country’s forests combined, making them key ecosystems for global climate regulation. 

 As part of the project “Forest Resilience of Armenia: Enhancing Adaptation and Rural Green Growth Through Mitigation,” implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)funded by the Green Climate Fund (GCF), a specialized training mission was conducted in Armenia from 10 to 15 May 2026.

On 19th March, for the International Day of Forests (21 March) and World Water Day (22 March), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) convened a high-level global event highlighting the interconnections between forests, water, economies and gend...

As countries navigate an increasingly complex landscape of climate related reporting requirements, the demand for accurate area estimates has never been greater. Whether for national communications under the UNFCCC, participation in carbon markets, or the emerging Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), governments need reliable, defensible, and transparent data that reveal the impact of their adaptation and mitigation actions. At the heart of these estimates lies a component that is both indispensable and resource intensive: human interpretation of satellite image timeseries for land use and land use change assessment. 

The quest to understand and manage the world’s forests began centuries before satellites. As early as the 16th century, European laws regulated logging, and by the 17th century, growing wood scarcity in Central Europe intensified concerns about sustainable supply. In the 1850s, foresters such as D. Brandis formalized these principles through systematic teak inventories in Burma, helping establish scientific forest management.  

Open Foris is a free, open-source initiative of forest and land monitoring solutions developed by FAO. The portfolio makes environmental monitoring more accessible, transparent, and collaborative for governments, communities, researchers, and practitioners worldwide.

From Local Forest Monitoring to Digital Innovation in Agrifood Syst...

Fifteen years ago, a Finnish-funded development project began reshaping how the world monitors its forests. Today, that initiative has evolved into Open Foris, a global suite of open-source technical solutions developed by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), now used in over 190 countries.

The European Programme for Sustainable Cocoa (SCP), the operational arm of the European Initiative for Sustainable Cocoa, implemented with FAO, supports Cameroon to strengthen the sustainability of cocoa production.

More than 70 participants from research institutions, academia, and field projects joined the

“Just 10–15 years ago, forest data was collected in many countries using pen and paper,” recalled Andreas Vollrath, forestry expert at the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO). “The introduction of digital tools, such as the Open Foris platform, has enabled developing countries to transition to electronic data collection and advanced remote sensing analysis, which opened the door to the large-scale use of artificial intelligence in forestry.” 

Kosovo has taken an important step in advancing its forest monitoring by launching the third cycle (2024–2025) of the National Forest Inventory (NFI). Building on earlier inventories conducted in 2002 and 2012, this new cycle marks a major technological leap forward through the integration of Open Foris Arena and Arena Mobile – open-source digital platforms that streamline data collection, processing, and quality assurance. 

FAO has launched a new publication, A Global Methodology for the Assessment of Direct Drivers Associated with Deforestation and Degradation, presenting a harmonized, statistically robust approach to identify and validate the causes of forest loss. A launch webinar took place on 2 October 2025, bringing more than 80 participants from around the world interested in understanding the methodology and its implications for forest monitoring.

Mexico is reinforcing its forest monitoring capacities – a vital step for the nearly 12 million people, including 3.6 million Indigenous Peoples, who depend on forests for their livelihoods. 

In August 2024, FAO provided a dedicated training on Open Foris Arena, FAO’s open-source platform for field data collection and analysis and funded under the “AIM4Forests: Accelerating Innovative Monitoring for Forests” programme funded by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Twenty-five specialists from the National Forestry Commission of Mexico (CONAFOR) learned how to design surveys, collect data with Arena Mobile, and integrate statistical analysis directly into their workflows.