We all know that making good decisions requires good data. This is clear in our day-to-day lives. How can we choose what to wear in the morning without knowing whether it will rain or not? How would we find the way to work without a map? Why would we ever go shopping if we didn’t know that the fridge was empty? 

To take decisions, we need information – especially when we are trying to solve complex problems. Forests are home to most of the earth’s biodiversity, and they supply us with water, livelihoods and food. And yet deforestation and forest degradation continue to take place at alarming rates. Reducing deforestation and managing the world’s forest resources sustainably is among the biggest challenges of our time. Just like the simple decisions we make every day, information is needed to make us aware of what is at stake and help us solve the problem. FAO provides countries with technical support and innovative tools to help them gather the data they need to monitor and protect their forests.

Here are some great achievements that prove that real progress can be made with better information on forests: 

Data from forest monitoring have enabled countries to reduce deforestation and manage forests better

Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research has been tracking deforestation across the vast Amazon since the 1980s. In the early 2000s, when the data showed crisis-level deforestation, there was an outcry from civil society, both in Brazil and internationally. The government acted decisicvely, and the following years saw legal reform, a change in law enforcement, new fiscal incentives, new protected areas and innovative private sector engagement. Several of these activities directly use Brazil’s forest monitoring data for decision-making. During 2005-2014, deforestation rates dropped by around 70 percent. 

Viet Nam also turned around its forestry sector when transitioning towards a market-based economy. The country’s forest cover had been declining for decades, but in the early 1990s Viet Nam decided to introduce a more careful approach to logging quotas were set based on forest inventory results. FAO has since supported Viet Nam’s forest inventories through a series of technical assistance programmes. Also, Viet Nam launched vast tree planting programmes, using the same technical capacities for forest inventories, for site identification and progress monitoring. Net forest loss has stopped, and Viet Nam’s forest area has been increasing ever since.