A total of 48 participants from 26 organizations related with Agriculture Forestry and other Land Uses (AFOLU) came together for the workshop on “Data Sharing, Institutional Arrangements and Tools for GHG Emission Estimation for the AFOLU Sector”, recently held from 6 to 8 December, 2017 in Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), Dhaka, facilitated by Bangladesh Forest Department (BFD) and Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), and with financial and technical assistance from FAO-NFI project on “Strengthening National Forest Inventory and Satellite Land Monitoring System in support of REDD+ in Bangladesh” and the UN-REDD Bangladesh national program, amidst the presence of Mr David W Doolan, FAO Representative a.i., in Bangladesh, Mr Rakibul Hassan Mukul, Project Director, UN-REDD National Programme and other relevant stakeholders.

This workshop aimed to brainstorm and discuss data sharing, institutional arrangement and GHG emission estimation tools relevant or of potential use for Bangladesh – with a particular focus on identifying and providing policy recommendations to achieve transparent data collection, documentation and archiving processes.

Data sharing and complexities related to intellectual property have significant implications for Greenhouse Gas emissions reporting - a discipline that requires significant cross-sectoral collaboration and involvement of numerous government and non-government actors.

In their opening remarks, Mr Doolan, FAO Representative a.i., and Mr Mukul, PD, UN-REDD National Programme highlighted the data accessibility issue as key to making decisions in managing natural resources and emphasizing the importance of establishment of a permanent institutional framework for GHG emission reporting to the UNFCCC. 

Mr Matieu Henry, Chief Technical Adviser, FAO-NFI project said “Data inaccessibility leads to duplication or wasted time spent searching for data. By improving access and transparency to data, more time could be invested to improve the quality of the estimates and better guide decision-makers”

During the consultation, the participants discussed existing and ongoing government initiatives on data sharing infrastructure such asNational Enterprise Architecture (NEA), National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI), Bangladesh Geographical System Platform (BGISP), Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100, National Land Zoning Project, and GeoDash. The participants were familiarized with the first national database for emission factors in the AFOLU sector as well as the GHG emission estimation tool “EX-ACT” (EX-Ante Carbon balance Tool) developed by FAO.

The participants recommended that the outputs of the workshop should be presented at a high-level government meeting of the relevant ministries engaged with the AFOLU sector for endorsement and subsequent establishment of an operational GHG institutional framework for data collection, documentation and archiving.

The FAO-NFI project, due to be completed by December 2018, is being implemented by the Bangladesh Forest Department under Ministry of Environment and Forest, with the technical support of Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and SilvaCarbon and financial assistance from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).