Estimating emissions and removals from forest degradation is important, though challenging, for many countries. Where forest degradation is a major source of emissions, governments want to cover it when reporting on their mitigation efforts. However, estimating emissions from forest degradation is hard.

There are major challenges to accurately estimating emissions from degradation, such as defining forest degradation and setting the scope for estimating carbon stock changes, detecting and monitoring degradation using earth observation data, and estimating associated emissions and removals from field observation results.

This booklet provides an overview of the methodological options available to countries to address these challenges while collecting the emerging experience of dozens of countries that have already reported on emissions from forest degradation internationally. The authors attempt to summarize country experiences in estimating carbon stock changes from forest degradation and their methodological options.