Capacity-building workshop on monitoring tools for forest and landscape restoration in the Mediterranean region
27/11/2023
Based on a bioclimatic definition of the Mediterranean region, the area includes more than 25 million hectares (ha) of forests and about 50 million ha of other wooded land. Mediterranean forests are part of multifaceted landscapes marked by centuries of human activity. Despite an increase in forest cover by 1.8 million ha between 2010 and 2015, there are 80 million ha of degraded land – including forests – in the Mediterranean. More than 400 000 ha of forests are burnt every year, and at least 16 percent of animal and plant species in Mediterranean forests are threatened with extinction due to global threats such as climate change1.
Many national, regional and global goals for forest and landscape restoration have been set. The challenge is to conserve the main cultural landscapes and at the same time restore the most degraded or threatened ecosystems. Given these global and regional targets and ambitious new national commitments, it is important to plan and implement long-term monitoring frameworks for forest and landscape restoration.
As part of the project “The Paris Agreement in Action: Scaling-Up Forest and Landscape Restoration to Achieve Nationally Determined Contributions” funded by the International Climate Initiative (IKI) of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety, and Consumer Protection (BMUV), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), with financial contribution from the Union for the Mediterranean, organized a regional capacity-building workshop for Mediterranean countries on monitoring the restoration of degraded forest landscapes in the region. The workshop was hosted by the European Forest Institute’s Mediterranean Facility (EFIMED), and was attended by experts from Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Portugal, Tunisia and Türkiye for a total of 14 attendees and six FAO trainers in total.
Many existing monitoring frameworks generate a low ratio of information to data and are difficult or impossible to implement within available project budgets. This workshop focused on presenting available tools developed by FAO for monitoring ecosystem restoration, which are useful for guiding management actions and informing future planning.
The workshop also provided an opportunity to improve the Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA) 2020 Remote Sensing Survey (RSS) for the Mediterranean region. The FRA 2020 RSS strongly emphasizes incorporating field knowledge during imagery analysis by ensuring effective participation from the survey countries. The global samples were interpreted by workshop participants who had knowledge of local vegetation types and land uses. These experts were trained on the FRA RSS methodology, photointerpretation and the use of satellite image interpretation and analysis software.
The workshop applied a learning-by-doing approach and allowed participants with limited knowledge of remote sensing to analyse satellite imagery and consistently collect data on the Mediterranean region. It also helped participants better understand the context of Mediterranean forest and landscape restoration, with a focus on the role of monitoring frameworks.
The training session also provided a unique opportunity to share experiences and expertise among Mediterranean countries from the European Union, North Africa and the Near East, thus contributing to the regional momentum and knowledge sharing on forest and land restoration monitoring.
The tools presented and used during the first two days of the workshop were as follows:
- AURORA (Assessment, Understanding and Reporting of Restoration Actions) is a decision-support tool jointly developed by FAO and the World Resources Institute (WRI), which helps stakeholders develop a monitoring system tailored to their needs by identifying indicators and metrics to monitor progress towards their goals.
- Se.plan, part of the FAO tool System for Earth Observation Data Access, Processing and Analysis for Land Monitoring (SEPAL), is a spatially explicit decision-support tool that helps users identify locations where the benefits of forest restoration are high relative to costs, subject to biophysical and socioeconomic constraints set by users to identify the areas where restoration is permissible.
- Earth Map is a free application that provides easy access to satellite imagery and geospatial datasets, enabling analysis of global and local changes on the Earth’s surface. This supports policymaking and investment decisions. It is user-friendly and does not require coding skills.
- ABC-Map (Adaptation, Biodiversity and Carbon Mapping Tool) is a geospatial application based on Google Earth Engine to assess the environmental impact of policies and investments in the agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU) sector.
- FERM (Framework for Ecosystem Restoration Monitoring) is the official monitoring and reporting platform of the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. It is currently under development and being piloted in selected countries including in the Mediterranean region.
The workshop offered a unique opportunity for Mediterranean countries from the European Union, North Africa and the Near East to share knowledge about applying FAO-developed tools on monitoring forest resources, to the restoration of Mediterranean degraded lands.
The FRA RSS data collection was also the first step of a process to gather more accurate data on Mediterranean forest resources, which will be used for upcoming key publications on the region.
This was the last of a series of four workshops on the Mediterranean initiated in 2019, which brought together approximately 100 experts from the region to share knowledge on financing, planning, implementing and monitoring restoration of degraded lands.
Valentina Garavaglia (FAO)