Roadmap For The Establishment Of Forest Reference Levels And The National Forest Monitoring System

The Government of Kenya is in the process of establishing a National REDD+ Programme through the Kenya Forest Service (KFS). Two critical elements of the National REDD+ Programme are forest reference levels (FRL) and a National Forest Monitoring System (NFMS). This document describes the steps towards establishing the design of the NFMS and reference levels, through an enumeration and description of required tasks.

REDD+ must be transformational. REDD+ requires broad institutional and governance reforms, such as tenure, decentralisation, and corruption control. These reforms will enable departures from business as usual, and involve communities and forest users in making and implementing policies that a ect them. Policies must go beyond forestry. REDD+ strategies must include policies outside the forestry sector narrowly de ned, such as agriculture and energy, and better coordinate across sectors to deal with non-forest drivers of deforestation and degradation. Performance-based payments are key, yet limited. Payments based on performance directly incentivise and compensate forest owners and users. But schemes such as payments for environmental services (PES) depend on conditions, such as secure tenure, solid carbon data and transparent governance, that are often lacking and take time to change. This constraint reinforces the need for broad institutional and policy reforms. We must learn from the past. Many approaches to REDD+ now being considered are similar to previous e orts to conserve and better manage forests, often with limited success. Taking on board lessons learned from past experience will improve the prospects of REDD+ e ectiveness. National circumstances and uncertainty must be factored in. Di erent country contexts will create a variety of REDD+ models with di erent institutional and policy mixes. Uncertainties about the shape of the future global REDD+ system, national readiness and political consensus require  exibility and a phased approach to REDD+ implementation.

"This document builds on the brief paper presented at the 7th Meeting of the UN-REDD Programme Policy Board, held in Berlin, October 2011 (UNREDD/PB7/2011/13), which lays out ways to consider the REDD+ monitoring and information provision needs in the broader context of national development and environmental strategies, at the implementation level. The purpose of this document is to describe the elements in National Forest Monitoring Systems (NFMSs) as they relate to REDD+ under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and to describe the UN-REDD Programme approach to Monitoring and Measurement, Reporting and Verification (M & MRV) requirements."--Page v.

The preservation of forests, sustainable forest management (SFM), forest landscape restoration (FLR) and the need to make the most of precious forest resources are priority issues in the policy and sustainable development agenda of the Asia-Pacific region. Innovation will be key in the coming decades to meet the increasing demand for wood and other forest products while halting and reversing deforestation, in line with the commitment taken at COP26 in Glasgow by the international community. However, uptake of innovative technologies has been slow and uneven in the Asia-Pacific region, and there remains a gap between political commitments and the investments – in education, capacity building, and infrastructure development – required to put them into practice. This technical report examines the potential and barriers to disseminating and deploying innovative technologies for SFM in the region and provides overarching recommendations and specific options for decision-makers. It delineates and informs the process by which decision-makers and actors can identify: the potential of innovative technologies to advance SFM; their potential impacts; constraints to technology uptake and scaling up, and how to overcome these constraints and facilitate adoption.

This Occasional Paper is a review of the development of Ethiopia’s REDD+ MRV system, its national architecture and policies, progress made so far, and plans for the future. It is not a technical review of the current MRV system. We use published and unpub

The Republic of the Union of Myanmar is a forest resource-rich country, but is also facing serious deforestation and forest degradation problems. Currently, Myanmar's forest still covers more than 40% of the country's land area (Aung (2001) but 70% of its population live in rural areas, and the agricultural sector is the main contributor to the country's gross domestic product (GDP) (30%) (World Bank 2014). The country faces the all-too-common dilemma of how to develop its economy while at the same time curbing environmental degradation and contributing to carbon emissions reduction. In 2013, Myanmar adopted a REDD+ program and started its preparatory phase. Myanmar established and developed its National Forest Monitoring System (NFMS) and Reference Emission Levels (RELs) for REDD+ following the guidance and modalities set out by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Implementing REDD+ requires political commitment to address direct and indirect drivers of deforestation, an adequate funding mechanism that is based on a thorough analysis of all costs and benefits, a transparent and equitable benefit-sharing mechanism, and a participatory decision-making approach in which all stakeholders can take part in REDD+. The Global Comparative Study on REDD+, together with its country partners, is compiling profiles of 14 countries to better understand the socioeconomic contexts in which REDD+ policies and processes emerge.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has been providing support to member countries on national forest monitoring for decades. Best practices and lessons learned from this support are summarized in FAO´s Voluntary guidelines on national forest monitoring (VGNFM). The guidelines provide principles, elements and best practices for the establishment and implementation of a multipurpose National Forest Monitoring System (NFMS). The aim of this paper is to strengthen the elements and guidelines provided in the VGNFM in the context of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+). It also includes a deeper analysis of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change decisions and the most recent methodological recommendations provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, focusing on the three pillars of an NFMS for REDD+: a Satellite Land Monitoring System, a National Forest Inventory, and REDD+ reporting, including the combination of remote-sensing and ground-based forest inventory to estimate anthropogenic forest related Greenhouse Gas emissions by sources and removals by sinks.