More than 300 representatives from governments, international organizations, leading research bodies and the private sector are gathering for the Plenary of the Global Forest Observations Initiative (GFOI) at FAO headquarters this week to boost global monitoring of forests and further action on climate change.

The GFOI is a partnership working to help coordinate international support to tropical developing countries on forest monitoring and greenhouse gas accounting for REDD+ and related activities. 

The aim of the Plenary is to share information and ideas, review progress and identify new opportunities for helping countries to improve their forest monitoring capabilities to enable better forest management and ultimately reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“Better information about forests is key to enable the global community to take decisive and significant action on climate change within this decade,” said Tiina Vähänen, Deputy Director of FAO’s Forestry Division. “We need to help countries to operationalize monitoring systems and embed these in their national institutions.”

According to FAO's Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA), despite some progress in reducing deforestation rates, ten million hectares of forest were lost annually due to deforestation between 2015 and 2020.