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On 17 November 2021, join the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) for the international, technical webinar, “Mind the gap: addressing National Forest Inventory capacity needs to support climate action.”  

Date: 17 November 2021 

Time: 14:30 (Rome) Register in advance here   

Objectives:  

• Highlight the importance of national forest monitoring systems (NFMS) and National Forest Inventories to support climate action.  
• Share knowledge, experience and capacity needs for the implementation of forest monitoring from Guatemala and Liberia.   
• Launch of FAO’s national forest inventory (NFI) online training modules to facilitate NFIs design and implementation and support forest data analysis for policy and decision-making. 

Agenda and Speakers:  

• Welcoming remarks: Fabio Picinich, FAO eLearning Academy; Emily Donegan, moderator (FAO)  
• Introductory remarks: Rocío Cóndor, FAO, NFM team (FAO)  
• Presentation by: Saah A. David, National REDD+ Coordinator, Forestry Development Authority, Liberia   
• Presentation by: José Rodrigo Rodas Ramos, Jefe Departamento de Planificación Institucional, Instituto Nacional de Bosques, Guatemala  
• Q&A with: Saah A. David and José Rodrigo Rodas Ramos 
• Launch of the NFI modules with joint presentation by: Rebecca Tavani, Forestry Officer, NFM team (FAO)/ Lutz Fehrmann (Gottingen University)  
• Q&A with all speakers 
• Closing remarks: Julian Fox, Team Leader, NFM team (FAO)  

About this webinar:  

This webinar is part of a series organized by the FAO elearning Academy, Agreenium, UN-ESCAP, and Future Food Institute (FFI) to discuss and learn from current trends in thematic areas related to various global challenges, including climate change and sustainable development. This particular webinar will focus on the ways in which National Forest Inventories (NFI) can support climate action. It will provide an opportunity for practitioners, international experts, researchers and other professionals to interact and share experiences and perspectives. Further, the webinar will launch FAO’s new NFI online training modules.

NFIs allow countries to gather accurate information about the size, distribution, condition and use of forest resources. This information provided by NFIs informs policies and sustainable forest management practices that contribute to climate action. With climate change posing an even greater threat than ever before, country efforts to implement NFIs are increasing around the world. However, NFIs are complex, drawing from multiple data sources, such as field inventories and remote sensing, and therefore require significant technical knowledge and institutional capacity. Due to this complexity, knowledge sharing across countries and organizations, and the development of information and training materials, will highly benefit countries implementing NFIs.   

Speaker Biographies:

• Julian Fox is team leader, National Forest Monitoring (NFM), Forestry Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). As team leader of NFM, Julian coordinates global normative NFM work, global NFM tools (Open Foris and SEPAL), and a significant portfolio of country support activities of the NFM team (active in forty-five countries). Julian Fox has 20 years of experience in forest monitoring as a manager of international and national projects, researcher, teacher, and technical specialist. He also has 7 years of experience living and working in developing countries managing projects in Papua New Guinea and Zambia. Julian holds a PhD in forest monitoring.
• Rocío Cóndor-Golec is leading the "Building global capacity to increase transparency in the forest sector (CBIT-Forest)” global project of the FAO financed by the CBIT trust fund of the GEF. She is coordinating activities to make forest data more transparent, accessible and available and helping developing countries meet the Paris Agreement's enhanced transparency framework (ETF), in collaboration with key international stakeholders. Rocío has 20 years of experience working at the national and the international level on measurement, reporting and verification under the UNFCCC and currently supporting the ETF implementation at the FAO.  Rocio holds a Masters Degree in Environmental Science and a PhD in Forest Ecology.
• Saah A. David, Jr., a development practitioner and Climate Change Expert, heads the REDD+ Implementation Unit of Liberia as the National REDD+ Coordinator. This Unit leads on the implementation of the Liberia Forest Sector Project (LFSP) funded by the Government of Norway through the World Bank. The LFSP cuts across six Government Entities. The Unit under his leadership has successfully implemented two REDD+ projects funded through the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility. He also engages actively in mobilizing and consolidating partnerships with development partners and Civil Society. He holds first Degree in Economics and Master in Business Administration and certifications in Climate Change, REDD+, Sustainable Forest/Natural Resource Management, National Forest Inventory Planning and Management, and Monitoring and Evaluation. 
• Rodrigo Rodas is a Forestry Engineer, Chief of the Monitoring and Assessment Department at the National Forest Institute of Guatemala. Its experience aims at the generation of key information that strengthens policy decision making and allows the assessment of forest resources. Rodrigo participated in the development of the National Forest Inventory of Guatemala and also shared his experience in the Forest Inventories of Kenya, Gambia, Brazil and Angola; he recently contributed to the development of the methodology for the second National Forest Inventory of Guatemala, which is ongoing at the moment. Rodrigo´s experience in the forest sector, has allowed him to know which are the key methods to generate the most proper information in order to develop plans, programmes and projects for the benefit of the forest sector.
• Lutz Fehrmann is a senior scientist working at the chair of forest inventory and remote sensing at University of Göttingen. He holds a PhD in forest science and forest ecology since 2006. He is also a lecturer in forest inventory and forest mensuration techniques in different study programs. As a consultant for UN-REDD or GIZ, he was involved in different NFI planning processes. He has more than 20 years of experience in academic teaching and capacity development as well as practical expertise in forest inventory and remote sensing applications.
• Rebecca Tavani co-leads the national forest inventory (NFI) thematic area within the National Forest Monitoring (NFM) team, Forestry Division, FAO. She has over 14 years of experience coordinating global activities related to national forest monitoring systems and providing technical support on NFIs to countries primarily in the Africa region. She has also managed and provided technical support to statewide community forestry initiatives in the northeastern USA (NJ, ME). She holds a Master’s of Forestry from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
• Fabio Picinich works as instructional designer at the FAO elearning Academy. In addition to coordinating learning projects and creating various types of learning and outreach products: elearning courses, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and tutored courses, he manages the organization, delivery, and communication of the series of webinars organized by the FAO elearning Academy in collaboration with Agreenium, UN-ESCAP, and Future Food Institute. Fabio holds a master’s degree in international business and a master’s degree in diplomacy and international politics, both attained at the University of Padua, Italy.
• Emily Donegan joined FAO in 2013. Her work focuses on forest monitoring, REDD+ and climate change. She is currently working on the CBIT-Forest project to deliver knowledge and training materials such as the e-learning course “Forests and Transparency under the Paris Agreement”. Emily is interested in climate action, biodiversity, research and communicating science and promoting knowledge exchange. She holds a master’s in Environmental Sciences with a focus on soils and a bachelor’s in Plant Sciences. She is from Northern Ireland.