A one-day inception meeting of the FAO/GEF project “Building global capacity to increase transparency in the forest sector (CBIT-Forest)” has taken place at the FAO Headquarters in Rome, Italy on 19 February 2020. The workshop gathered 20 participants representing organizations and FAO departments, including forestry, climate change and capacity development, involved in the implementation of the project. After a round of introductions, a brief presentation on the history and work of the Capacity-building Initiative for Transparency (CBIT) Trust Fund was delivered by Jeff Griffin, Senior Coordinator of the GEF Unit at FAO. Afterwards, Julian Fox, the Team Leader of the National Forest Monitoring Team presented...

It is often acknowledged that making decisions based on scientific evidence is good practice and that, therefore, providing decision-makers with reliable information is an important development strategy. This is also true in the forest sector, where forest monitoring has often had the explicit or implicit ambition to inform policy-making. At the country level, there are various examples of how links between forest monitoring and policy-making can be established. Viet Nam, for example, experienced a shift in its forestry sector in the early 1990s as a result of policy efforts to accelerate the agricultural transition and expand a sustainable forest industry. With...

Approximately 2.5 billion people worldwide rely on collective lands as a source of food, fuel and income. The customary claims of indigenous peoples and local communities cover more than half the global landmass, including some of the most important and biodiverse forest areas in the developing world. Recognition of these rights and securing them would make a substantial contribution to reducing deforestation and forest degradation. Secure tenure systems have also been recognized for leading to scaled-up, transformational changes in the landscape for long-term, successful climate change mitigation and activities that enhance sustainable development (FAO-CIFOR 2018). The recently-launched UN-REDD technical paper, “Collective...

Science and gender equality are both crucial to a country’s development. In many societies, women often face exclusion in forest-based activities and initiatives resulting from social, economic, and cultural inequalities that limit their ability to fully participate in and benefit from REDD+. It is therefore crucial that deliberate and meaningful efforts are taken to ensure REDD+ actions are inclusive, fair and gender-responsive both in policy and in practice. An essential step on the path to quality is to recognize and act upon the fact that despite having no innate cognitive differences, women are underrepresented in many scientific and technical fields, particularly...

Imagine a forest that covered half of your entire country. A biodiverse forest which supports thousands of species from giant anteaters to armadillos to jaguars. A forest that is home to diverse peoples and cultures -- and one of world’s last uncontacted tribes. That forest is in fact a reality in Paraguay, a South American country of seven million people, landlocked between Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia. It is home to much of the Gran Chaco forest that is considered the second largest forested landscape in South America -- second only to the Amazon rainforest. And like other countries which are home to...