Country Cases

Côte d’Ivoire

In Côte d’Ivoire, the Cocoa and Forests Initiative (CFI) builds on involving the private sector in monitoring and has identified an opportunity for the Transparent Monitoring project to contribute to monitoring, traceability, and agroforestry. A specific need has been identified for transparency definitions and independent verification of baseline maps to enhance the country’s authority over data used in national GHG reports.

The objective of the Transparent Monitoring project in this respect is to act as “honest broker” to assure an effective system is designed with regards to transparency and accountability and to develop a guidance for assessing emissions mitigation along supply chains consistent with national approaches.

This project further aims to improve the transparency framework for monitoring emissions and removals in the land use sector covered by the NDC, supporting SDG 13 (Climate action, e.g. 13.2 Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies, and planning). Achieving SDG 13.2 requires establishing a Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) system.

Ethiopia

Ethiopia’s monitoring capacities have improved over recent years; they would benefit from improved quality and sharing of land use and biomass data and enhancing transparency and completeness at national and provincial levels. Many of Ethiopia’s REDD+ and NDC targets are related to reforestation, which is difficult to monitor remotely. Participation of local communities and governments is therefore required. This entails integrating data reported by local entities into the existing MRV system and providing benefits to motivate local participation.

The project’s activities will enhance the capacity of Ethiopian stakeholders to participate in and benefit from REDD+ monitoring, forest landscape restoration monitoring and NDC-tracking and focusses on providing guidance to stakeholders for the use of open source tools and open access data sources. The project contributes to SDG 13.2 (Climate action, as in the case of Côte d’Ivoire), and also more specifically SDG 15.2 that promotes, by 2020, the implementation of sustainable management of all types of forests, halt deforestation, restore degraded forests and substantially increase afforestation and reforestation globally.

Papua New Guinea

PNG has extensive forest areas which present opportunities for mitigation. In the past, rapid exploitation of these forests by uncontrolled logging and land use conversion to agriculture has led to increased land use sector emissions. Since 2005, PNG has been a global leader in promoting REDD+ under the UNFCCC and has been building national and regional capacities to implement REDD+ activities since 2009. PNG established a national forest monitoring system based on the national forest inventory, that already uses elements of TM and that will serve as a model for other countries.

This project’s activities that include reviews, evaluations and workshops on the PNG MRV national system will be used by the PNG Authorities as a Quality Assurance and Quality Control (QA/QC) action for the whole national monitoring, measuring and reporting system and assess accomplishments and implications of implemented TM approaches with particular reference to participation of indigenous peoples and local communities. This project will help the country prepare for the review processes implemented by the UNFCCC Secretariat and it will focus on the actions to improve transparency in all the national system elements (e.g. National Forest Monitoring System, GHG Inventory, BUR, NC, NDC, etc.). Special emphasis will be placed on the analysis of the adoption of open data and data accessibility policies.

The project activities will strengthen PNG’s capacity to promote sustainable forest management and biodiversity conservation (SGD 15.2), and contribute to international commitments, as the Paris Agreement (SDG 13.2).

Peru

Threats to Peruvian forests are increasing due to expanding oil, mining, forest concessions and agriculture, with associated risks to water supply, food security and climate change. Approximately half of national GHG emissions are originating from land use sector activities. Peru has mitigation activities and incentive systems in place but needs better integration of local expert monitoring with national data sources to stimulate an open and transparent exchange of information and stakeholder engagement. Country activities of the project have a strong potential for increasing accuracy and transparency of monitoring systems; and will consistently link mitigation planning to actions and reporting.

The project contributes to the development of practices, guidance and upscaling of interactive monitoring integrating local expertise and the national monitoring system for forest protection.

As deforestation is one of the primary sources of GHG emissions in the country, the contribution of the project to more accurate estimates of GHGs from land use will support the implementation of SDG 12.2 in the country, i.e. the integration of climate change measures into national policies, strategies and planning, as well as SDG 13.2 (see above) and SDG 15.2 (sustainable forest management and forest protection).