Measurement and Performance Tracking: Forestry and Land Use

Overview

The forestry and land use component of MAPT focuses on enhancing institutional capacities for measuring and tracking performance of climate initiatives in the forestry/land use sector. In consultation with government officials, WRI is examining functions, capacities, roles and responsibilities, and mandates in the forestry/land use sector for measuring emissions/enhanced removals. This includes conducting an in-depth analysis of the common challenges and best practices in monitoring emissions/enhanced removals.

Preliminary findings demonstrate common challenges for tracking the impacts of climate initiatives in the sector, including limited frequency of data updating, lack of long-term consistency in data collection, and significant lag times between data collection and reporting. Additionally, at present there are few countries with up-to-date land use and forestry inventories and data management systems that enable data integration and policy tracking.

In addition, there is often a need to strengthen forest-related work in existing institutions, or in some cases, to create a national forestry institution, in order to bring together the disparate work currently taking place across a number of institutions, ministries, and research centers. A key focus for the forestry component of the MAPT work in the near term will be to strengthen the institutional capacity of the government of Ethiopia to track emissions and removals in the forestry/land-use sector.

Scoping

In 2011 WRI worked with in-country partners to conduct a scoping exercise in each of the six MAPT countries. This included a combination of surveys with key stakeholders including government officials, workshops and desk-based research.

The scoping exercise gathered information on existing technical and institutional capacity for monitoring emissions from land cover change and tracking the impacts of policies aimed to reduce emissions from land cover change. This includes information on existing data collection systems, institutional capacity for monitoring emissions and removals, and current land management practices. In particular, the survey aimed to identify key gaps in current systems and priorities for technical and institutional capacity development. The results of the country surveys, as compiled by in-country partners, can be accessed here.

Outputs

• Guidance on monitoring standardization in the forestry/land-use sector.
• Research on strengthening institutions for governing measurement and performance tracking in the forestry/land-use sector.

Background: This work builds off WRI’s extensive experience in forest monitoring. WRI’s Forest Landscapes Initiative seeks to increase the ability of governments, businesses, and civil society to protect intact forest landscapes, manage working forests more effectively, and restore deforested lands. Additional information on WRI’s work in this sector can be found via http://www.wri.org/project/global-forest-watch

Contacts

For further information on this component contact Kemen Austin.

Related Links

A Seven-Country Assessment of National Capacities to Track Forest Carbon Dioxide Emissions and Removal
Forest Landscapes Initiative
Forest and Landscape Restoration