Monrovia- With funding from the World Bank Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, the Government of Norway and technical assistance from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the Government of Liberia is working to to ensure that it’s vision of Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) is achieved.      

From the 12-15 February 2019, FAO in collaboration with the FDA organized a capacity development event where data managers from the National Forest Inventory (NFI) were trained in data analysis for biomass and carbon estimation.   

Mr. James Kpadehyea, National Forest Inventory (NFI) Coordinator speaking on behalf of National REDD+ Coordinator termed the exercise as “rewarding” adding that this training will equip participants with the necessary skills to undertake data processing and analysis independent of support from the FAO.

He added that reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation may lead to a significant decrease in the amount of harmful CO2 in the atmosphere, contributing greatly to national and international efforts to combat climate change.

The first Liberian National Forest Inventory (NFI) was launched in Lofa County in June 2018 and intended to take stock of the forest resources in Liberia. The NFI is funded by the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility and is implemented by the FDA with technical support from FAO.

The NFI field work activities have been completed in the REDD+ Priority Areas and are currently being conducted in non-priority areas. Data from the priority areas are now being analyzed and used to produce estimates of key forest resources in these areas. Non-priority landscape areas will be analyzed at a later date.

The intention of the training is to take all individuals involved in the collection and management of the NFI data through the process of importing the data previously taken in the field and validated through the cleaning tool in OpenForis Collect.

The process will involve defining the survey design, including complementary files and developing R code to proceed with the estimation.

In conclusion, FAO Forestry Expert based in Rome, Italy, Javier Garcia Perez informed technicians that FAO works with countries to strengthen their capacities in designing, collecting, analyzing and reporting data from national forest inventories.

He also added that these involve the collection of bio-physical data that can satisfy national and international information requirements on forests, their management, carbon stock and biodiversity.