FAO -voluntary guidelines on national forest monitoring and its possible effect on measuring, reporting and verification for REDD+

Abstract

During the 23rd session of the FAO-Committee on Forestry (COFO 23) held in July 2016, the voluntary guidelines on national forest monitoring were approved. These guidelines were generated to support FAO member countries on the starting-up and the implementation of their national forest monitoring systems (NFMS). Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the decision 1/CP.16 encouraged to developing country Parties to undertake actions for REDD+, and requested, inter alia: i) to develop a forest reference emission level and/of forest reference level (FREL/REL) as a baseline for the emission reductions report, and ii) a transparent and robust NFMS. This paper examines the technical assessments from UNFCCC of the FREL/REL submitted by six countries in relation to technical needs for the NFMS setting up. The analysis suggests the need to improve the procurement of ground-base data, to comply the quality of the estimations on forest emission changes, to complete the carbon stocks estimations, and to estimate the associated uncertainties. The strategic and technical planning of the NFMS is also needed, to be able to reach the acceptable preparation level for measuring, reporting and verification system of REDD+, and the FAO voluntary guidelines are a helpful tool for the step-wise approach development.